UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

hi, i d like someone to tell me what are the tell tale signs of knowin your head gasket has gone? urgent!

real easy one, open ur bonet unscrew ur oil cap and if there is a mayonase looking substance around the top then its on its way, maybe already gone if really bad. !

yea......should look kinda creamie

Best way is to take your rocker cover off n see, if the white substance goes all the way across. The substance is crap collected from condensation etc. This tends to happen across winter. I had a small amount of the substance weeks back, on the cap. Wiped it off hasnt come back.
Sorted.

Smeg on the oil filler cap (not always head gasket if it does a lot of short journeys).
Smeg on the dipstick.
Disappearing oil and/or water.
Anything behind you disappearing under a cloud of white smoke.

cheers guys and girls, have nt checked for smeg yet, but i think its losin a very tiny bit of water, i don t know, but i m hopin its a split pipe or something? have any body else had this problem?

Could be a lot of things, none of them really critical if it's only losing a little water now and then.

ive got mayo on my oil cap but its condensation... and my oil breather pipe is FULLL of that s**t... my water is fine though...open the water tank up and check if its CLEAN... if it has a bit of oil in it...i.e. lying on top of the water then its defo hed gasket... when i had hedgasket on and old polo thats what happened...

ive got no oil in with my water so im ok with that, i havent got smeg when i check the dipstick, but ive got smeg when on my oil cap, but my car does a lot of short journeys! ill try wipin it to see what happens! any more information ?

or if you smell the water it smells of combustion smell( hard to describe but it doesnt smell of antifreeze.)

Wiped off smeg on oil cap, done a journey, looked again and nothin apart from clean oil, whats u r verdict then?

JamesRees05 wrote:Wiped off smeg on oil cap, done a journey, looked again and nothin apart from clean oil, whats u r verdict then?

you should have left the smeg on the oil cap and warmed ther up to operating temp ( the temp gauge stops halfway between hot and cold) then took her for a blast down the mway ) normally clears it.

if the engine runs hot its normally cos your loosing water but your car seems fine as it doesnt seem to be loosing anything just a small amount of water like you said but that could be from any where pipes water pump ect.

After reading this thread I checked my oil filler cap and it had a lot of mayo on it

Does this mean i'm in trouble? I'm not burning through oil or coolant (assuming thats what you mean when you say talk about the water being contaminated?). My dipstick is also mayo free.

Any ideas guys?

Edit: I can sleep easy, my head gasket's fine.

Hi guys, just to let you know it was the water pump causing the leak! a garage wanted £170 with parts, i know you got to take the timin belt off to get to the water pump but i did nt realise it was that big of a job!
But my mates brother has offered to do it for £90 fitted, what u reckon!?

If you have the know how and are brave do the pump yourself, had the headgasket go on mine (caused by the waterpump blowing up on me), I had to slacken the engine mounts and drop the engine (very carefully) to get the old pump and bits out and new one in. Took me about a day to do it.