Thread: White gunk in car radiator?

Was just checking water before heading out for the weekend, and noticed white paste on both my radiator cap underside, and the dipstick on the overflow bottle.
Cleaned it up and its not come back over the weekend trip.

2002 Commodore - no overheating, clean coolant - low kms, its been a goodly car to me!
Should I be panicking or getting it checked ?

Sounds like oil in the coolant?

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Originally Posted by veitnamcam

Sounds like oil in the coolant?
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Yeah that's whats freaking me out.

Is it the 3.6l?

Originally Posted by Tommy

Is it the 3.6l?

3.8

I've seen mentioned online that they run a trans cooler down the side of the radiator as part of the radiator, and this can leak into the water.
Will check that tonight - cause I'll put a wee cooler on it if that's the case - even if its not the cause of the issue.

If its not that, it will likely be headgasket

If the coolant is as you say clean, I doubt it is contaminated with oil, usually very obvious when oil is present very milky coloured and sludgy. Possible calcium build up over the years from the water mixed with the coolant.

If your head is cracked or gasket is gone you will have overheating issues and either contaminated coolant or oil.

Originally Posted by mawzer308

If the coolant is as you say clean, I doubt it is contaminated with oil, usually very obvious when oil is present very milky coloured and sludgy. Possible calcium build up over the years from the water mixed with the coolant.
If your head is cracked or gasket is gone you will have overheating issues and either contaminated coolant or oil.

Hmmmm - I like the sound of this better than the post above you.
Coolant is nice and clean, as is oil. Never overheated or had any heating issues.

Will give the coolant a flush out and going to investigate if the trans cooler is part of radiator and reroute if it is..... might also get that head test done just in case.

If you do add a Trans cooler run it in series, don't bypass the rad cooler. You don't want the Trans fluid too cool

Sent from my workbench

FYI - its looking like its a inlet manifold gasket, mechanics having a look see on Monday - apparently a common fault in Commys.

Had a Vt with the same problem, its common as you said with the VT model, its not that hard to do it yourself to replace the intake manifold gasket , Utube VT intake gasket , gives good instructions .