Oil in coolant 2013 Passat TDI

[passdattdi]

What/how can I check to determine if oil cooler failure, or cylinder cracked or head gasket blown? I scanned vehicle. There is no check engine light. Only thing scan came oup with were fuel injectors for all cylinders "open circuit". There is no sign of coolant in the oil; only oil in the coolant. Car did not overhaet. Most of the oil was Lost. No external leaks. This all happened within a 70 mile drive.

 

[Crasher]

Not easy to test, more efficient to just change it but flushing out the system is going to be a horrible job and will probaly take two or three attempts. I would use the official VW flushing chemicals.

 

[Uwe]

Not easy to test,

Pressurize cylinders one at a time and look for air getting into the coolant?

-Uwe-

 

[SaVAGeSoot]

Start with the plastic oil filter housing... that would be my first guess.

 

[passdattdi]

Thank you! Now with presurizing process, that would include turning the engine; with no oil, would that be damaging, or just simply add oil for the test? Would this result in contaminated coolant circulating in the engine and possibly causing more issues?

 

[BlueR32]

This is a difficult problem to analyse because you can have good head gasket compression sealing to the cylinders but the oil supply to the head pushing oil into the coolant system. It's worth checking to see if there is any oil leaking externally around the head gasket where the oil supply feeds the cyl. head. As noted it could also be the cooler leaking oil into the coolant. If you remove the cooler and there is no white/milky oil/coolant mix this may not be where the problem lies.

 

[Uwe]

Now with presurizing process, that would include turning the engine; with no oil, would that be damaging,

I can't imagine that when turning it over by hand, it makes any difference whether there's oil in the sump or not; you're not going to have oil pressure either way.

By "pressurize" I mean with air from an air compressor -- basically like a leak-down test.

-Uwe-

 

[passdattdi]

I can't imagine that when turning it over by hand, it makes any difference whether there's oil in the sump or not; you're not going to have oil pressure either way.

By "pressurize" I mean with air from an air compressor -- basically like a leak-down test.

-Uwe-

I get it now. TY

 

[passdattdi]

Pressurize cylinders one at a time and look for air getting into the coolant?

-Uwe-

I have the leak down test kit on order and arriving tomorrow. If I do that test first, without removing the oil cooler yet, will results be valid-that is if oil cooler has failed, should air bubbles be expected ? Or should i inspect the oil cooler first and replace if damaged?

 

[Crasher]

It won't be cylinder pressurisation causing the contamination. The oil cooler is water cooled. The cooling system runs at around 0.5 Bar and the oil system upto 5 Bar so it is obvious which way it would go. If it was a cylinder pressure leakage problem, you would know without testing. A CKRA cooler, part number 03L 117 021 C, is held on with four M6 screws and I imagine you can get a Febi 103463 for $50.

 

[Uwe]

The cooling system runs at around 0.5 Bar and the oil system upto 5 Bar so it is obvious which way it would go.

Is it? Get the engine good and hot. Shut it down. Oil pressure immediately goes to zero. Coolant remains pressurized for a while, no?

-Uwe-

 

[passdattdi]

Not easy to test, more efficient to just change it but flushing out the system is going to be a horrible job and will probaly take two or three attempts. I would use the official VW flushing chemicals.

I just called few auto parts to inquire about flushing chems. They mentioned they had nothing at the moment and shops were using household soap; but they were taking the engine apart to wash everything...Is this going to be necessarily required? I was thinking a flush of some sort, was not anticipating taking engine apart-too advanced for me ):

 

[BlueR32]

FYI - I've never heard of an auto parts store that didn't have std. radiator flush. Granted it's going to take multiple flushes to try and remove the oil but I am not aware of any special radiator flush specifically designed to remove oil. Even a Walmart that has an auto dept. probably has radiator flush.

 

[passdattdi]

Sorry, typo. Called one place and its a auto parts sepcializing in vw cars. They didn't have anything "special" for flushing and the comment about taking engine apart got me concerned. I'm not concerned about the repititions as long as don't have to take apart engine components.

So we know oil got into the coolant and raidator needs to be flushed clean of oil. By flushing radiator, does this also flush out rest of cooling system where coolant runs thru , hence flush out the oil contamination from entire cooling channels? Or is that going to be a separate flushing?

Also, do i need to worry about coolant in the oil ? I don't yet see indication of coolant where oil would travel thru. But in case that were to happen, do i need to flush-clean the coolant that would have entered the channels where oil circulated through?

 

[BlueR32]

Radiator flush is just added to the water and will flow thru the radiator, oil cooler, heater if turned on, etc. Obviously you want to determine where the oil is entering the cooling system before using the flush or the oil will continue to contaminate the coolant. You should not need an oil flush/change unless the coolant has gotten inside the engine itself.

 

[Crasher]

VW have their own flushing system G 052 525 A3 and one specificity formulated to deal with oil cooler failure oil contamination, G 055 188 A 3. Expensive, but they work.

 

[Eric]

*G 055 188

 

[passdattdi]

Completed leak down test. Neither pressurized cylinder resulted in air bubbles at the reservoir. However, cylinder two did yield noticeable air escaping thru oil cap and dipstick compared to other cylinders very minimal air hiss at the oil fill cap.

I still installed new oil cooler. Old one didn't look too bad and had been replaced installed about three years ago.

Had already drained oil and coolant. Refilled oil. Filled coolant with flush. Started engine and oil again back in coolant reservoir. I hear clacking sound when engine running.

Cracked head gasket; cylinder head; ? What's worse case scenario here? I have Erwin manual, many vw specific tools, an of course the vcds scanner. I'm a worse case scenario, is this a diy job? I have replaced turbo, high pressure fuel pump, along with timing belt, deleted dpf, replaced valve cover, injectors: but not messed with heads, pistons, and such-what do y'all think? Can I do it?

 

[RGH0]

I would flush the coolant system a couple of times to see if it clears out all the oil as you just may be seeing residual washing out. You need to drive the car to get it up to temperature and run the heater so that all the coolant system is flowing.

But the noise and excessive air leakage on one cylinder into the sump is more concerning certainly suggests a piston or ring problem. I would investigate more on the suspect cylinder with an endoscope and a relative compression test which requires an oscilloscope to measure cranking current and disabling the injectors before tearing into the engine. If no obvious bore damage the I would soak the piston in a suitable cleaner to see if its stuck rings and they can be freed up

Its a big and complex job to pull the head and sump and remove pistons and if you have not done anything similar before but certainly doable with time, patience in reading the manual in detail and all the right tools but its the last resort if all the diagnosis says there is something mechanically wrong a piston and the engine needs dismantling to fix which will be expensive depending on what machining work may be required. The alternative is replace the whole engine with a known good used one.

 

[SaVAGeSoot]

You gonna keep ignoring #4?