hi all, new to the site and hoping someone can help me a bit

fistly my cars a 2005 mk2 focus 2.0 tdci with 126k on the clock

having a quick inspection the other day i noticed a creamy, mayo type gunk in the filler cap. obviously when you see this you immediately think head gasket

im ashamed to say whilst ive kept with the upkeep of the car ive not paid much attention to regular fluid levels etc, the cars been faultless over 30k in 2 half years!

up until june i was doing regular trips on the motorway every fortnight of about 550 miles, now however its used mostly just for a short drive to work around 10-15 minutes

the car had just had a oil change a couple of days before finding the gunk, however the dipstick dosent show any signs of contamination, neither is there an oily haze in the coolant.

coolant level has gone down occasionaly but this is over a matter of months and several thousand miles,

the car dosent smoke from the back and on a run out yesterday returned over 50mpg so that hasnt changed

really the only sign of an issue is in the filler cap and upon a bit of research some people mentioned condensation causing this

im keeping an eye on all the levels and any build up now but everything seems fine with the car, i just dont want to be spooked into trading it in if theres nothing really wrong with it as its been a fantastic car and i owe nothing on it!

so any help or advice would be appreciated. thanks in advance!

danny

The coolant has went down its a sealed system it doesnt go down suggesting there may be a small gasket leak however being a diesel on a 10 minute trip it will still be cold wrong car for the wrong use a petrol is what you need ide say long runs is what it likely needs

Thanks for the reply! I went on a 70mile round trip yesterday. It ran faultless! Still signs of gunk in the filler.

Coolant looks a bit mucky I must say but no oily haze! A little unsure what my next or immediate move should be

Your next move should be to get the head gasket replaced, or at least, get a compression test done. I'd say you have a small leak, but the upshot is, it's not going to get better by itself. And you don't want to be 70 miles from anywhere when it decides to get worse (which it will, sooner or later).

It's good that you aren't experiencing any other symptoms yet (smoke, rough running, overheating), but why wait til it gets that far?

[edit] Oh, one other thought - how are you checking the expansion tank for oil? It'll be really hard to tell while it's in the tank, but if you're sucking some out with a hydrometer, then it's probably worth noting that what you're probably doing, is just sucking up coolant from the bottom of the tank - the oil floats on top, so that may explain why it looks OK.

Thanks again. Basically just checking in line of sight from different angles in daylight if you get what I mean

Having done a bit of research ive seen a few people pop up with the option of oil coolers failing. Is there any other possibilities of it being something other than head gasket failure is it common for the hg to fail on these?

.Thanks

it could be an oil cooler issue yes and as for heag gasket failures no not really to be honest ide have a compression test or sniffer test done