Megane Scenic - Head Gasket or not ?

Honest John Back Room » Technical matters
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Thu 1 Sep 2005 15:52
Megane Scenic - Head Gasket or not ? - Studley_3270
Upon checking my 1997 Megane Scenic 1.9 rtdt (97,000 miles) yesterday I noticed oil in the coolant bottle. Of course - heart missed a beat and immediately I thought head gasket :(

However I'm not so sure. There are no other symptoms (no white stuff in the filler cap/dipstick), no 'bubbling' in the coolant bottle, and the oil in the coolant bottle is black oil - not oil and water .....

Car still drives, doesn't overheat, fan still cuts in when engine is hot.

So - visited a friend last night who is a trusted mechanic (works on military vehicles and strips down engines / gearboxes etc - so very knowledgable) - and he looked at it for me. He wasn't convinced about it being a head gasket - so started looking at other options.

Now - he reckons it could be the oil cooler unit (the oil filter sits on it - small thing about 1" deep - 2 coolant pipes attached). So today I visited a local (reputable) garage and managed to get a 'block' test done on it this morning (and that doesn't point to it being the head gasket either).

Tomorrow we're going to bypass the cooler / flush the system & run it for a week or two.

Any problems with that ? Any other suggestions ? Likely price of a new oil cooler ?

Any help / advice would be great in this worrying time (head gasket >£500+, Oil Cooler = much cheaper)

Thanks

Mark
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