[s-cars] chocolate grease in coolant expansion tank

[djdawson2@aol.com]

You guys need to flush your systems, refill fresh... and see what accumulates.
 
My suggestion is to disconnect the upper radiator hose... run the engine with the garden hose flowing into the surge tank.  Keep doing this until you've got it the system relatively clean.  Once the system is running with relatively clean water... add about 4 tablespoons of Calgon (take me away) to the mix.  This will help (safely) loosen any crud and desolve any mineral deposits.  Run this mix for a couple of hours of routine use.  Then flush the whole thing again with the hose.
 
At this point you should have a pretty clean system.  Leave the cooling system full of clean water.  Since it is summer, this is not a problem.
 
Then I would use the car normally... and see what starts to show up.  Hopefully nothing.  But if oil begins to accumulate, you will need to troubleshoot further.
HTH,
Dave
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Day <kday at ultrameta.org>
To: brian hoeft <qbrian at ptd.net>
Cc: s-car-list at audifans.com
Sent: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 14:35:00 -0400
Subject: Re: [s-cars] chocolate grease in coolant expansion tank


On Tue, Aug 02, 2005 at 06:14:21PM -0000, brian hoeft wrote:
> okay guys, so, to my horror while routinely checking for anything 
> disturbingly obvious with my baby, i got cracked in the jaw.
> 
> why is my expansion tank black, oh f---!... take off the cap, swirl my 
> fingers around and pull out fingerfulls of a black geasy substance.


I have weird black crud in my expansion tank, too.

I think it is rubber from the fuel hose that was mistakenly used to
replace the short turbo coolant line under the intake manifold.  That
hose disintegrated within a year.

The black crud showed up a few months after the bad hose was put in.

The last oil analysis showed 0.0% antifreeze in the oil, so I am 
assuming my headgasket is fine.

The black crud in this case is hard and slimy, and has not mixed with
the coolant.  Nothing at all like the chocolate milk-like coolant I saw 
with a bad head gasket on an old (fortunately non-Audi) car.

I wish I knew how to get that crud out, so I could confirm that no more
is accumulating now that the bad hose has been replaced.

-Kevin

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