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Rover 25: Oil, Water and a Head Gasket

Hi all

Simply: the old beastie's temp guage hit red, 1 mile from home. I limped her back, coasting down a large hill to get the temp down a bit. I left it for an hour to cool down (me, not the car, I craped my self!!!) and then I had a look at the engine bay, there was watery, rusty looking oil all over the rear , right hand side of the engine bay.

I looks like it has dumped its oil out of the coolant filler tank!!! By the look of the oil spread, it looks like oil and water mixed somewhere, the engine over heated and forced the mixture out of the coolant filler cap all over that part of the engine bay.

Assuming that the head gasket has blown and hoping that the head is not warped ( I tried to keep it as cool as posible, honest guv), I started taking the head area apart. Once the cam covers were off I could see the cams.

Now, I was expecting to see the same kinda gunk all over the cams that I have all over my engine bay. But, no. The cams look relativly perfect. The oil is clean and pretty nice. It all looks as it should be.

So, before I forge ahead removing the head, could there be another reason, other then the head gasket, for the oil and water mix coming out of the coolant filler cap? I dont understand how the crappy oil an water mix is not on the cams, but it is in the coolant system. Surely after a mile or so, the water and oil mix would be everywhere in the engine and coolant system.

So, can anyone throw any light on this before I get cracking on the head?

Cheers AC

Reply to
AC
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Head gasket gone, no question I'd say. Gone between a cylinder, cooling jacket and oilway. Sounds like it is pushing some of the exhaust gases out into the cooling jacket which are pressurising it and it is getting forced out of the expansion tank with the oil that is being lost too. Don't just get the head checked for warpage, get it crack tested too.

Reply to
gazzafield

In message , AC writes

Sounds like the head gasket gone by the hole for the head oil supply. You must get all of the mayonnaise out of the block, radiator, header tank, heater etc otherwise it will block the coolant flow. This will need large amounts of flushing and will take much longer than actually changing the head gasket

Reply to
David Toft

There is no mayo. But I know there is oil all over the coolant system, so the flushing will be necessary.

Would I be right in thinking that the mayo is a slow build up thing? And that the lack of it, but oil every where means the gasket went suddenly, rather than leaking over time?

AC

Reply to
AC

No. Mayo is virtually an instant thing. You will have it, in all the small ports and oilways. Ensure that you completely flush the engine through with flushing oil until clean.

Give you an example, English Electric did a large diesel lump called a

12SVT. A gent who will remain nameless obtained a large item fitted with this engine, changed the filters and oil (£3k's worth of work) and then just ran the thing without a cooling system compression test first. What he didn't know was that 9 of the 12 cylinder iners were leaking cooling water directly into the sump. It took all of a minutes running to totally wreck the oil, kill the filters and leave him in the order of a £40k bill to strip and repair the engine. An expensive mistake I'm sure you would agree.

PDH

Reply to
Paul Hubbard

Reply to
dawn lambert

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