Hi all

My sister lives about 220 miles away from me. She took her car in for an oil change and the guys refused to change it, telling he she had a bad head gasket. They showed her the mud on the dipstick.

It seems from our conversation that they based the diagnosis solely on the muddy dipstick. I am less inclined to think its a head gasket as she had no runnability issues and the car does not smoke or overheat.

I am more apt to think its the water pump seal thats shot and allowing coolant to get past the bearings into the engine. I dont want her to waste her limited income on a bad diagnosis and/or repair.

Personally, Id check the compression on all the cylinders first, which it seems they did not do before jumping to conclusions. If that came out ok, id go with a water pump change, flush the engine and keep my fingers crossed that the bearings havent been toasted by the coolant.

Thoughts, opinions, admonishments?

 

U are going in the right direction water pump

 

I forgot to say, she has a Concorde with the 2.7L engine, which is why Im on that line of thinking. Ive been a backyard mechanic for 15+ years now, but I always leave room for error. Especially when performing diagnosis with a deskchair and keyboard :P

 

Ok, more info.

She checked her coolant; i had her get some out with a turkey baster. Its good, but she doent know anything and got it from the overflow. She will check the radiator tomorrow, but right now, theres no oil in the coolant.

The car does not overheat or run badly.

The oil is obviously seperate from the sludge; I can see on a napkin she used to check it that there is indeed some milky white sludge on the dipstick, but a distinct seperation of oil and sludge.

Her oil level IS a little high, but she said the oil light came on and she put oil in without checking the fluid level - she just added 2-3 quarts, which I said was most likely way too much.

I really pressed her to check the coolant in the radiator itself but she is VERY inexperienced and pretty much gave up - she had been reading up and all for 5 hours already.

She drove it back and forth to work, in the city, 30 minutes each way without overheating or runnability problems. And the sludge is still not fully integrated with the oil - still that distinct separation.

 

Hopefully image codes work here :P

 

What leads me to believe this is sludge or water pump leakage is the fact that its not fully mixed as you can see, and she has driven it for 1.5 to 2 hours AFTER finsing out about it. That and you can see the sludge is only present where the dipstick is likely to contact the sides of the tube and near the bottom of the oil pan. Its not in the center part of the dipstick, where it wont be rubbing on anything on the way in/out and is higher up in the oil pan.

Sounds logical to me at least.