Slush in the cooling system advice

[thugginrobby]

Hey everyone,

So I was looking at my coolant and there are traces of oil in there causing the brown slush. It’s not the whole system but some of the coolant has a thin layer of oil present. I did the leak down test and it never showed any color indicating it is a head gasket failure. Before I end up just doing the head gasket, has anyone had a similar experience? Any way oil can get into the system without it being a head gasket. 87 iS with an m30b34

Any advice helps!
Thanks!

[Mike W.]

I had a 733 like that. Just a hint of oil in the reservoir. Did kind of make the rubber gasket on the cap a little funny though. After a while it started using a bit of coolant, not much, top it off once a month or so. I'd been down this road more than once so finally I bought a HG kit and pulled the head. While the HG was ever so slightly blown, I also had a cracked head. Just barely, but they don't heal. Since this was early this century I drove over to Pick and Pull, harvested the best looking one I saw, checked it for flatness with a level, brought it home and went thru it, lapped in the valves, new VG seals etc. Pulled the block drain plug so not to have coolant in the oil and didn't even chang the oil until it was due. Did kill the weekend though.

In other words, inspect very carefully and don't be shocked if it's worse than just a HG. Mine was on a '83 with about 270K on it, but not the original head.