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Hi all,
Over the last weekend took the 34 to a car show appoxiamately 100 miles from home. Car running sweet until last ten miles before reaching destination then noticed temp.gauge starting too climb. Pulled into sevice station and saw water spewing out of overflow. The water looked awful full of black slimy sludge. I allowed the car to cool off and refilled with clean water and continued on with no further problems.
Enjoyed the weekend and started home on the monday 31st Aug.
On reaching the motorway 5 miles away it happened again. Repeated previous fix but, on continuing only reached about another 2 miles down the road before it started again.
I decided enoughs enough and called out the AA and was relayed back home.
Can someone confirm that 1. I have a head gasket problem
and 2.Would the sludge cause overheating by blocking the rad tubes.
The water is only contaminated in the rad there is no water in the oil pan and the oil is clean but seems to diminish after a top up.
All help appreciated
Terry

I would be having a good look at the oil cooler/heater. It could be that oil under presure is leaking into the water at this point. This is not an unknown problem. Whatever the outcome you will have to get the radiator cleaned, I don't think that just a back flush will get all that oil sludge out.
Wade

G'day Wade,
Thanks for the reply.Please can you enlighten me on what I have to do with this unit? I take it thats the lump on the side of the block above the oil filter canister. Can this be taken to pieces and what should I be looking for?
Regards
Terry

Yes, it's the "lump" above the oil filter and attached to the water jacket plate. You don't have to remove the oil filter to service it. Inside is a core that looks very much like a heater core except that oil passes thru one way and coolant thru the other way, and of course it's built to take 75 psi or higher oil pressure, not 15 psi coolant as in a heater. Just by memory, remove the oil lines, then remove the two nuts/washers on the forward end nearest the fan. The unit is serviced thru the rear side, so remove the six or so fasteners holding the sheet metal rear cover, and out comes the core.

I've had mine leak twice, first time I tried a radiator repair shop but the repair wasn't permanent, they just don't understand or have the ability to repair to the pressures the unit experiences. And of course there is no such thing as a new core. There are probably as many "solutions" as there are clever people out there, and I'm sure Wade has his. I wanted to keep mine functional so I replaced the core with a section of extreme high pressure finned and flexible heat exchanger tubing, see picture below. Of course you can also just make a simple tube adapter to replace the core, you just won't get the benefit of the heat exchange but that's probably not much of a concern with today's multi-viscosity oils. If you go that route, length of the tube must be very precise as it must pull up on the oil side at the exact same time the cover pulls up on the water side.

Whichever way you go, remember that you have a FULL-FLOW oil system with the filter and exchanger in series and before the feed to the engine, so whatever you might fabricate for inside the cooler box should have a flow rate no less than the lines that feed it!

Some folks have decided to install a blank-off plate between the water jacket and the cooler so that if it leaks, the oil won't enter the coolant. Keep in mind the water jacket inside baffle is constructed so that most of the water must go thru the cooler before it continues it's flow to the rear of the engine. So if you decide to blank off the water inlet to the cooler, you'll have to consider some modifications to the water jacket side plate.

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Dave you are a mine of information and thanks very much for the latest update on the oil cooler.
Can you also clear up the point on the overheating please?
Is connected to the oil cooler letting the oil through and therefore blocking the rad?
Terry

Terry, assuming what you have is oil from the cooler getting into the coolant, consider that oil is a less-effective heat transfer liquid that water both due to it's chemical nature and to it's greater resistance to flow. I also don't doubt that it would preferentially want to wet the radiator tubes and hence form kind of an insulating layer. So I wouldn't be at all suprised that an engine in that situation would run warmer. That said, when my cooler failed I really didn't notice an increase in temperature; what caught my attention was oil coming out from under the radiator cap!

After I repaired my cooler, I didnt' remove the radiator to flush the oil out, but even a year or two later after many flushes I still could see the sheen of oil on top of the coolant, though there were no performance problems at that point. You've got to be careful what you use to flush with, you really want a co-solvent for oil and water and there aren't any that occur to me that wouldn't prove harmful to radiator hoses or something else, or have some other hazard associated with them. You could consider an emulsion (mix) of water and mineral spirits, followed perhaps by methyl or ethyl (denatured) alcohol mix with water. Whatever you choose you're no doubt going to have to do it many times as the interior of the engine block wetable surfaces will also be coated. No fun! You're probably going to have to replace the radiator (and heater if you have one) hoses, and less likely maybe even the water pump packing.

PS - it has just occurred to me that solutions of trisodium phosphate in water should be a good, safe solution for flushing the system. It's not like a solvent that will dissolve it, but it's an agressive detergent for grease and oil, and should be safe on hoses, as well as brass and solder. Maybe try something like one or two cups per 5 gallons of water.

Hi Dave,
Would it be possible for you to post some info on your heat exchanger pipe please? Items such as diameters etc
I don't know a thing about heat exchangers and I can only envisage from the info you have given on the oil cooler is that the pipe shown in your text is dual cored, one pipe to take the oil and the other the water.
Also where does one aquire such tubing, scrap yards, plumbers merchants etc?
Thanking you in anticipation
Regards
Terry

If you haven't taken your oil heat exchanger apart yet, have a look at "Wades Workshop". Mal posted some photos of the internals of mine there recently. It may give you some ideas.
Wade

I can only envisage from the info you have given on the oil cooler is that the pipe shown in your text is dual cored, one pipe to take the oil and the other the water.

No, the oil passes thru the interior of the tube, while the water flows over the outside. Just think of the tube coiled up and immersed in water.

I did this conversion over 35 years ago and don't really recall any specs, but such tubing isn't uncommon in the chemical processing industry and if this was the route you wanted to go I'm sure something like it could be located easily.

Thanks for the suggestion Wade but I can't really get much of an idea from yours. I need to know whats under the backplate where you can just see some of the tube. I wiil probably have a look at it in the next couple of weeks.
Regards
Terry