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I'm after some advice on a 9000 V6 with Oil in the Coolant.
Happy new year - this is my first posting in this forum and please forgive some of my technical terms as I'm writing from the UK.
This problem has a long history. About a year ago the car had this problem and after changing head gaskets and failing to fix the problem the repairer eventually advised me to swap the engine for a unit reclaimed from a scrapped car. This was done and the car has been fine until now. There has been a small amount of oil showing up in the top of the coolant header tank which I assumed was the remains of the oil that had got into the radiator, the pipework and the heater matrix. But not sufficient quantity to worry about - an oily glaze on top of the water in the header tank.
Over the past week Oil has re-appeared in the coolant in significant quantities, so much that it has clogged the radiator (which is what drew my attention to the problem) and there is noticeable loss of oil from the sump. But no water in the sump. I am reluctant to go back to the same repairer and plan to sort this out myself if possible - mainly because of expense and I have re-built other engines before. But I'm after some advice as to what I'm letting myself in for here.
The obvious candidate is a blown head gasket but I think this is unlikely considering the engine that is in there now has only covered about 35,000 miles. My favorite candidate is the oil cooler that is burried in the coolant in the bottom of the V. I'm not sure whether my car still has its original oil cooler from before the repair last year. If the car still has its original one then that may have been the cause of the problem in the first place.
I plan to remove the Oil Cooler and find a way of testing it for leaks. Should be fairly simple - its under the intake manifold. I could bypass it and run the engine gently to see if the coolant remains free of oil. Or even find a way of running the engine with the cooler connected but out of the V where I can see if it leaks - that's if I can keep the cooling system intact while I do the test that way.
This problem can't be that hard to fix. Oil and water have been kept apart in engines for over 100 years. But I may have to eat my words here!
The raised engine temperature was what made me investigate in the first place. How prone are the heads to warping if the temperature is allowed to get too high. If it turns out to require head gasket replacement, I don't have the GM tools for locking the cam shafts and crank shafts in place while I remove the cam belt. So I'd welcome any advice on how to improvise. Should I have the heads skimmed as a matter of course with this engine? Also there is a scarcity of Saab manuals for this V6 engine but I do have the Haynes manual for the UK Vauxhall Omega that has the same (similar) 3.0 V6 unit. How much tweeking have Saab done to the unit that I might need to be aware of? Are the head bolt torque settings different?
There must be 1000's of these engines around in different cars, Saab, Vauxhall, Opel, Chevy, Pontiac(I think) and others so there must be a good body of knowledge on how to fix them.
Also does anyone have good techniques of clearing the oil that has clogged the radiator?
So many questions - I'd like to hear from anyone else who been down this road who can offer me some advice. Besides run away - fast!
Thanks in anticipation
Ken
posted by 62.30.1...
, Tue, 14 Jun 2005 05:44:18
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