Carpokes Porsche Forum

so after doing head gasket and related gaskets and timing belt/balance belt ect. .. i still have a coolant leak and butterscotch milkshake in the oil pan .. after draining and cleaning oil and coolant out twice … could it be the internal oil cooler (ive heard those leak), maybe go to an external oil cooler ?

1. the car runs great, doesn't get hot, 5 on oil pressure gauge, drove an hour at highway speeds
2. no white smoke
3. no oil in coolant that i can see
4. definitely coolant in oil pan
5. no coolant leaking on outside or under car
6. coolant leaks/drains out of expansion tank with car cold and off
7. no coolant in passenger foot well under heater core
8. im 99% sure i did all the gaskets correct and decked each mating surface very flat

any ideas ??

-Eric

The oil cooler seals are probably leaking internally given your symptoms. I wouldn't drive it with water in the oil -- too hard on the bearings and such. I'd probably just change the oil cooler seals and hope that fixes it. No need for the external oil cooler unless you want one independently of this issue. Much easier just to change the stock seals than trying to work out all the details of an external cooler. We have a detailed how-to on changing those seals on a Turbo. Process is fairly similar on the N/A...

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Dang,if it's like my s2 I battled this same issue for a number of years.The s2 has oil/coolant exchanger on the right side of the engine block, so in between the block and the cover the there is a sheet metal gasket that has "O" ring seals in it which do fail with age.Porsche over the years came out with a number of different "O" ring materials sold as the a complete gasket with the sheet metal ect. ect..Some were red, some were green & some were brown.

The s2 has an external oil cooler in the right hand front of the car in front of the wheel below the fog light housing.This also contains two "O" rings one for the inlet side of the house the other for the out let side of the (two hoses total coming into the external oil cooler.I never had any issues with those seals.

The draw back to failed seals is it turns all your coolant hoses to a soft mushy feeling and the hoses begin to sweat oil or broken down rubber on the out side walls of them if they are left un checked/ replaced.

The other draw back is getting all the contaminated coolant out of the engine & radiator.Even after the seal issue is addressed I was for ever changing coolant to get things cleaned out.I was advised by a couple of factory mechanics at the time that flushing with "shout" & distilled water over a number of times helps clean out the oily coolant.Even after a number of years I still had a shallow film sitting on top of the coolant in the expansion tank.The expansion tank was another clean up project.It is baffled so getting all the oily residue out was another project.Being out of the car I had pretty good luck with kerosene and bottle bushes using boiling water, to reach hard to get to area's of the tank following up with citrus cleaner.The expansion tanks are really durable and molded out of really tough plastic.

I was always checking the oil level as an indicator as to weather I was pumping oil into the coolant.Since the first time I discovered the failure, the engine was down about 1 qt.In the s2 (3L. engine) the oil level sonsor is pretty sensitive.One qt. low tripped the low oil level light to come on.

Good luck, I hope some of this helps
Stig

ya i was driving it before i knew all the new problems .. i haven't driven it since

i think the s2 like stig said has an external cooler and mine the 1985.5 has an internal cooler so ill try the replace oil cooler seals trick and hope it works

ive replaced about half the car so far one more part is bound to happen

oh and i replaced all the coolant hoses and i forgot the little one in back and it burst .. but i replaced it and the heater control valve just for why not and i got a fully pressurized coolant system for the first time in a long time … but that wasnt the main problem .. its probably been the oil cooler this whole time .. well prob a combo of parts really .. because the old head gasket looked a lil rough with some extra holes in it

i got this kit .. is this all i need ?

i heard something about shims or are the shims in kit ?

I don't know what year you have but I would definitley do the seal change. If you have an early model with the old 3 piece OPRV, make sure you use an alignment tool. This is a very common repair for these cars.

ive got the special mid year odd duck model the 1985.5 with parts from 85 and 86 refresh

whats the alignment tool look like ? and where would i get such a tool ? … maybe Tom has a 3d file

Call pelican parts

If you are in the Bay Area, I can loan you my alignment tool.