Went to drain the coolant to install Evans waterless water (good stuff) and noticed some oil floating on the top of the old coolant. Apart from a head gasket breaking down the only other point of entry is the heat exchanger next to the oil filter. Checked on internet and apparently it is not uncommon for the seal to go between the water way & the oil way. Easy to unbolt, hard to tell if there was a fault so ordered a new heat exchanger & gasket from main dealer. Don't want oil going in the Evans waterless water. I reckon about an egg cup full of oil had got into the coolant, the thing is though until it gets really bad and emulsifies in the expansion bottle one would never know without draining the coolant. Hopefully a new gasket & heat exchanger will sort it. The heat exchanger is there to warm up the oil quickly as the coolant would get hot much quicker than the oil, or so I've been told! My car is the 3 litre, N52 engine.
Oil in the coolant
- Thread starter Chuffer
- Start date
Fingers crossed.Fitted the new heat exchanger and gasket, used a small paintbrush to apply a lick of hylomar to the gasket (belt & braces!). Refilled with the performance Evans waterless water, ran the bleed cycle for 10 minutes & fired up the engine. All good. I was worried that I had read somewhere that one needed two gallons of coolant and I could only put in 6 litres. My fear was I had left some old coolant lurking in a corner somewhere. To test if any old coolant was in the system I took it for a blast up the duel carriageway to get it well into operating temperature. Got home and with it still nice and hot unscrewed the expansion tank lid. If there was any water based coolant it would normally go fairly dramatic! as water boils at 100c and the engine runs at 110c. No worries, there was a slight phss and that was it, so no water in the Evans waterless water as that only boils at 180c. There is only 6 litres of coolant in a N52 engined Z4. I tried to find on the internet somewhere the coolant capacity, the Holy Grail would be easier to find!