[Vwdiesel] oil in coolant - not headgasket?

[Erik Lane]

Yes, it is the same kind of oil cooler on the
vanagon/transporter as on the newer cars. Super simple
to replace. The hard part is cleaning all the oil gunk
out of the coolant passages!

No, there's no guarantee that it's the oil cooler and
not the head gasket. I checked it by taking off the
two coolant hoses and hooking them straight together
(so the coolant system is a closed system again, but
without going thru the oil cooler.) Then I ran the
engine and simply watched the oil cooler to see if
coolant/oil was being pushed out the coolant ports. It
was both times.

And as far as me never seeing oil in the coolant from
a head gasket - I don't know what I was thinking. Just
in the vanagon has it never been like that for me. In
other cars, VW and not, it is a common thing to see if
a head gasket goes bad. I need to wake up a little!
Sorry.

The oil cooler costs about $100 from the dealer, which
is the only place to get it other than a wrecking
yard, which I wouldn't recommend at all. Of course the
head gasket is the same as the others - about $16 last
time I got one. So it's a trade off - either more
money in parts and less work, or more work but less
money. (Assuming that the head is in good shape, of
course.)

Doing a compression check can find head gasket
problems, but not always. A leak down test can also
find them sometimes. It just depends on where the head
gasket has gone bad if it has.

As far as I know, the early VW cars did not have the
oil cooler, just the vanagon/transporter. At least
none of the ones I have had it. It's easy to check -
just look at the base of the oil filter for a squarish
box with a couple ~1 inch coolant lines going to it.

Good luck,
Erik


--- mikitka <mikitka at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Changing out the oil cooler if it like the one on my
> 91 jetta is really
> easy. You just have to take the oil filter off. Then
> take the flat, not sure
> of the size, 22mm maybe, don't hold me to it, that
> that nut off and
> disconnect the coolant hoses that go to the cooler
> and then just pull it
> down. You might want to take the hoses off before
> you take the nut holding
> it on loose. That is about it.  I'm not the best at
> stating directions
> hopefully you get the idea. It really isn't hard to
> R2  (remove & replace)
> 
> Nick
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: vwdiesel-bounces at vwfans.com
> [mailto:vwdiesel-bounces at vwfans.com] On
> Behalf Of Neil
> Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 6:12 PM
> To: vwdiesel at vwfans.com
> Subject: [Vwdiesel] oil in coolant - not headgasket?
> 
> Do I have this right - oil in the coolant is likely
> to be from a bad oil 
> cooler, not so much from a leakey headgasket or bad
> head?
> 
> This might be pretty good news....  one of my '81
> 1.6 nad rabbits has oil in
> 
> the expansion tank, but no other symptoms - starts 
> ok, runs ok, etc...
> 
> So.. how would I test for a bad oil cooler?; what's
> involved in changing one
> 
> out?
> 
> Thanks,
> Neil
> 
> 
> 
> 
> previous message:
> 
> I expect Loren will jump in here, but I'll offer a
> few
> ideas.
> 
> Look at the base of the oil filter. There should be
> an
> oil cooler there that has coolant lines going to it.
> When it goes bad it will let oil get into the water,
> at least in my experience. Ours always have more oil
> pressure than coolant pressure at that point - I've
> never seen the coolant get into the oil.
> 
> 
> 
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