My motor is broken

Today I was driving for about 20 mins from cold start, a bit of motorway followed by a bit of 40 mph. I was sitting at lights waiting to move along and I could hear a loud noise that I later noticed was the engine cooling fan, lights go green and there was no great response from the accelerator when pressed, hmmmmmm panic..........
Engine revved up but movement forwards was slow, seemed to holds its revs at 2000rpm and allowed me to move along. I limped down the road noticing my engine temperature was well on the way up to maximum on the gauge so pulling into a side road I shut the engine off and started to look around under the bonnet.

First thing was dip stick was dry, odd as its not long been serviced

Second thing was black oooze escaping from the coolant header tank

Engine fan stayed on for a good 20 mins, I gradually added 2 litres of oil to a HOT engine. No visible oil leaks from motor and once the engine oil was able to be measure by the dipstick it was a golden oily colour not oozy or creamy.

The header tank was full of this nasty black ooze which I can only assume is a mixture of water & oil nicely boiled together and had kindly spilled out onto the roadside. I contacted the RAC who sent somebody who immediately said its either 'oil cooler' or 'head gasket' and I cant fix that for you. Long story short a low loader was sent to collect my motor and transport it home.

Can anybody help me identify whats happened here please, got a busy week ahead as is and this couldn't have happened at a worse time.

Ive attached some pics that have a heavy yellow / green tinge to them but this is from trees and hedges on roadside and not the actual colour of the very very dark grey / black ooze

54 plate TD6 vogue

Thanks in advance.

Unfortunately it looks like the head. Plus side if it is that the oil has gone into the water not the other way round. Sorry. A garage will be a lot more help than me. [img]http://www.fuelly.com/driver/rob2529/range-rover[img/]
04, 4.4V8, Vogue Oslo Blue with LPG.
"You can sleep in your car, BUT you can't race your house!!!!"

If something can't be fixed with a hammer....... You have yourself an electrical fault!

Check out the cheap things first IMO

could well be the oil cooler , lets hope it is

good luck

Yep be on the blower to Dan first thing.

Anybody know what I could expect to be paying a decent indy for a head gasket change ?

Hi mustard where in the north are you?
North west or way up there? Only ask as the Indy I used in Birkenhead was amazing the other day saved me around £800.

Hello Crookedm,
Im local to your area as Ive spoke to you before.
I use Mr Barclay as well for some stuff but he doesn't have recovery trucks so Ive got to deal with having a 3 ton lump moved around without driving it

Just read the post... So sorry mate

Sorry about that! PM sent to you.

Hope you get something sorted mine went waps up last week on my week off. Typical as we really needed it.

The only way to know for sure will be some proper tests ie compression etc. However with the cooling system full of that much oil & no trace of coolant the other way I would suspect oil cooler. Did you have a lot of pressure in the cooling system? Cleaning that oil out will be a pig for some poor soul though. good luck Worse things happen at sea! Well thats what swmbo said when WRENS came to sea!!!

I was only just thinking the other day after all Ive done is pamper it how reliable it actually is and bosh it fekkin breaks down on me....

Yes there was a tremendous amount of pressure in the cooling system, I didn't take the cap off fully for quite a while for fear of it emptying its entire red hot oooozy black contents onto this nice country type lane (I had several onlookers) and also possibly spraying me in it. I poured a small amount of water across the top of the header tank to see if it would wash the ooze away but then it was clear to see the oooze was very oily indeed. Apparently there is a chemical flush that can be used to clean out the cooling system ......

I recently did the EGR bypass and cam breather filter & valve change so Im wondering if Ive brought this about as a result of anything that Ive had done to the motor

I doubt very much anything you have done would cause it,gaskets fail & so do coolers but on a positive note if it is the headgasket & done properly it should do many tens of thousands of miles with no more probs. Worse things happen at sea! Well thats what swmbo said when WRENS came to sea!!!

Do you know what that sort of service costs ? Ive got to try sleep tonight

I would be guessing but gen parts depending on how many holes your headgasket has (1-3 denote thickness) between 50 & £100 plus headbolts & other gaskets,coolant antifreeze,oil,filters,flushes etc I would guess an indy inc vat would be about £800. Also the head may need Skimming which you may have to budjet another £50.00 + extra labour to strip down head. Worst case a Grand. But thats only a worst case guess. Hope that helps you sleep tonight & if the engine was due a service then you could offset some of that cost for the repair. Worse things happen at sea! Well thats what swmbo said when WRENS came to sea!!!

The horrible thing is Ive just had it major serviced as well, all that lovely golden fresh juicy oil......turned into black muck, all the fresh coolant anti freeze mix ready for winter, lovely fresh filters and so on

Could have been worse, could have sub zero and snowing

Thanks for your input mike but I just hope its just the oil cooler koz that means more vino for xmas for me

crookedm wrote:

Hi mustard where in the north are you?
North west or way up there? Only ask as the Indy I used in Birkenhead was amazing the other day saved me around £800.