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Originally Posted by GT475
It is a 3.0 6 speed manual.
My wife came home one night complaining of not having heat at a stop light but getting it back when running.
I had check the coolant to find it below the low mark on the plunger. I top it off (about 1L) and since she had an appointment for the brakes, and the temp gage was steady at the middle, I figured it was Ok for now.
Last Saturday (we had the appointment yesterday), she complained again about the loss of heat. I checked again and sure enough, the plunger was low and when I top it off again, I notice the infamous brown liquid coming at the top. I asked about white smoke and sign of overheating and she said no. Outside temp was around 10deg C so maybe, it was enough to keep the engine cool enough but I would be surprised. If the engine was overheating, the temp sensor should have picked it up and should have shown a problem on the computer board at least.
I told her to drive easy and not to put compression on (manual tranny) and keep it low rev.
As for the sludge in the oil, well that has been a long time issue with this car. When it was new, I complained about the high oil consumption (my 5L FORD iron block consumes less oil than that engine) and BMW put it on their surveillance program only to find everything was normal.
Then one day (many years ago) I had to fill the oil as I do regularly between the schedule change to notice the inside of the oil cap was showing a funny thick whiteiss-browniss paste. They say it was normal for that engine.
I figured that the absence of white smoke probably comes from the gasket leak between the water passage and the oil (away from the combustion chamber). I have not seen what the oil looks like (most likely contaminated with coolant) but I still hope the oil pressure was higher than the coolant pressure and the oil leak into the coolant system more than the other way around.
We will see tomorrow. When I call 1 hour ago, they were about to remove the valve train.
Crossing my fingers.
I am not buying the block story either. They will put an helicoil in if the break or strip a thread and I will do it myself if I have too.
Marc
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Well, good luck. I would still definitely look to another shop for an opinion...a shop warning you a head of time that they may damage the motor "looking for additional problems" is a red flag to me (although from your post looks like they are already doing the work). Also the 3.0 is a common motor, one they should be extremely familiar with by now.
I've only had one car blow a head gasket, an 89' Porsche Turbo S, and that was a $2500 job. I hope you manage to get in repaired as painlessly as possible.
As to the H2O temp gauge, BMW has been buffering those for years, so that they never show true coolant tempurature, and only go ed in the event of catastrophic failure. I recently bought a little gizmo called the Scangauge II from Amazon....its a $150 OBD 2 monitoring device and computer...it also will monitor coolant temp to the degree and save the highest value per day in memory...a worthwhile little device...and it matches the amber illumination color of our cars to boot.
http://www.scangauge.com/