1998 S70-oil in water, water in oil

Cincyken · Post by **Cincyken** » 10 Dec 2013, 07:46

About 6 months ago i noticed my antifreeze looked brown and had a foamy look. I check the engine oil level and it was low. I noticed a slight tan color on the bottom of the dip stick.
My mechanic said it was a blown head gasket.
He replaced the head gasket and all the hoses. When i looked at the old head gasket it looked fine.
Shortly there after, the same problem came back and then the mechanic said it must be a leak in the oil cooler. He tryed radiator sealant first and then the radiator was replaced, and the problem did go away for awhile (about 3 months). Yesterday i was checking the oil and noticed it was low and had a tan color at the bottom of the dip stick again. I then looked at the radiator resevoir and there is oil in it again.
Here is what i am now worried about, do i have a cracked head and the sealant added 3 months ago temporarily sealed it and now it is leaking again?
What is going on with my engine?

sawtooth4x4 · Post by **sawtooth4x4** » 10 Dec 2013, 08:01

blown head gasket?

MilehighV70XC · Post by **MilehighV70XC** » 10 Dec 2013, 08:13

First- get a new mechanic. A compression check would have helped him diagnose a bad head gasket or not. If he put some type of stop leak, try and get your money back and run. This "mechanic", I use this term lightly, has no idea what he is doing. That stop leak stuff is horrible! and will ruin your motor and cooling system.
Do a compression test and get back to us with the numbers.
If it is the head gasket. Your "mechanic" should have had the head and blocked checked. He probably should have had them decked to make sure they where 100% flat before the new gasket went on. From the little info you gave us, sounds like the head is not 100% flat and is letting coolant into the oil. A cracked head is pretty rare but could be the problem.
Did the problem go away after the stop leak or after the radiator replacement?
Has the car ever overheated?

mfagus · Post by **mfagus** » 10 Dec 2013, 08:18

+1 to Milehigh! There is no way I would let a "mechanic" put that stuff in my engine. First order of business would be to find a mechanic, a VOLVO mechanic.

Mark

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 10 Dec 2013, 08:25

I don't think radiator stop leak will do anything for an oil cooler leak. The oil pressure (40 PSI give or take) is higher than the coolant pressure (15 PSI give or take). The stop leak does, however, do a dandy job of blocking the passages in the head.

...Lee

instarx · Post by **instarx** » 10 Dec 2013, 12:54

MilehighV70XC wrote:If he put some type of stop leak, try and get your money back and run. This "mechanic", I use this term lightly, has no idea what he is doing. That stop leak stuff is horrible! and will ruin your motor and cooling system.

I have to disagree with you on that. Yes, the stuff you buy at the auto parts store is worthless, but there are products which work - trust me on this, I know.

A few years ago I had a blown head gasket in my diesel truck. Estimates were $3,500 to fix it, so decided to try other things. I was active on a diesel board at the time, so I announced my project and posted all the results. I was basically volunteering to be a guinea pig to see if it worked or not. In the end I was amazed at how well the product I tried worked. I used a product called AutoRX that stopped the leak in less than 5 miles of driving. And my leak was huge - all my coolant would be blown out of the radiator within ten miles of driving. True, the repair only lasted a year, but if it will last a year in a diesel engine it will probably last forever in a gas engine.

As for ruining the engine, six months later my water pump started leaking and I replaced it. When I had it off I looked at all the coolant passages and they were clean and bright. Then when I took the heads off later, all the coolant passages were clear and clean. It did not harm my engine or put a coating on any coolant passages.

So, do not just assume that all these products don't work and they ruin engines. I cannot (and would not) say any other product was any good, but I do know that the one I tried fixed my engine for $100 rather than for $3,500, and it did it no harm. The repair lasted for a year, when I had to bite the bullet and get into the engine myself and replace the gaskets (two weeks of work in humid 95 degree heat and $350).

Replacing the head gasket is clearly the best thing to do when it is possible, but you can't just say out of hand that these sealers don't work and will to ruin your engine. Using this stuff isn't best practice, but neither is it as worthless or as damaging as you say. Again, I can't say anything about any other product.

But Ozark Lee is right - in this case it would not be appropriate since it sounds like an oil leak, not a coolant leak.

Cincyken · Post by **Cincyken** » 10 Dec 2013, 20:18

He is a retired Volvo mechanic.
He did a compression test and it passed and when i looked at the old head gasket once it was removed, it looked okay. It is hard for me to understand how it was a blown head gasket before and is again.
I do not believe he checked the head for flatness when he had it off.
It seemed logical to me that it was the oil cooler in the radiator because when the engine is running, the oil pressure would be higher than the coolant pressure and oil would flow into the coolant, then when the engine is turned off, the residual pressure in the coolant would cause the coolant to flow into the oil. Since i had oil in the coolant and coolant in the oil, it seemed like the cause was a leak in the oil cooler. So the radiator was replaced next.
I am just very frustrated that after all that money, i am now back to square one......oil in the coolant and coolant in the oil.
Is there any diagnostic check i can do to better understand what is going on? I hate to just start taking it a part again.
As an example, if i disconect one of the oil cooler lines and then pressurize the radiator, and coolant comes out the oil cooler, then that will tell me the the problem is with the new radiator.....correct?
Then if it passes that test, i guess i have no choice but to pull the head again....correct?

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 10 Dec 2013, 22:37

I would rent a block tester from one of the chain auto parts stores. You will need to buy the fluid but it only costs about $8.00 or so. If the fluid changes color then you have a blow head gasket or even a crack in the head or the block. If the fluid doesn't change color then the chances are diminished that it is a head gasket.

The fluid changing color is quite affirmative but the converse isn't necessarily true, you can still have a bad head gasket but the leak is slow enough that the test fluid doesn't quite catch it in the prescribed amount of time on the test procedure. If you get no color change then the next logical step is a leak-down test. For the purposes of the leak-down test I would isolate the engine from the rest of the cooling system so that you don't get a false positive indicator.

...Lee

instarx · Post by **instarx** » 11 Dec 2013, 09:37

But wait, isn't that a transmission oil cooler in the radiator and not an engine oil cooler?

Post by **erikv11** » 11 Dec 2013, 09:50

All pre-98 turbo models have both a trans cooler and an oil cooler built in to the radiator. NA models have only a trans cooler.

99+ have an improved oil cooler setup built into the oil pan, eliminating the oil cooler lines and the cooler in the radiator. You can actually put a 99-00 oil pan on the earlier models and get rid of those pesky, leak-prone oil cooler hoses, it was a pretty popular modification before it became most popular to just get a newer car ...