Mayonaise in E240 oil but not water

[Deleted member 16279]

I am driving a 1998 E240 Auto .

When I went to top up my oil yesterday there was mayonnaise under the filler cap .
Fearing the worst I have given it the once over and water reservoir is clean and full .
It is using some oil , but not an excessive amount (1 litre in 6 months ).
The dipstick oil looks fine (a little black , but no emulsion) .
But under the oil filler cap there is not just a little emulsion , but looks like the engine has been topped up with a jar of Helman's .

Do I need to start getting quotes for the head gasket , or is there something else I can check first ?

 

[Sp!ke]

Do you do lots of short journeys?

 

[Big_Jon]

Do you do lots of short journeys?[/quote

Very valid question indeed, very good.

Basically, cars that do only short journeys create condensation in the rocker box which manifests as mayonnaise over time and is very prominent when you take the oil filler cap off.

I love this as when at auction, private punters check filler caps on low mileage cars, they always do a runner suspecting a blown head-gasket leaving us to fill our boots.

 

[raymont]

Had a 1998 E240 with exactly these symptoms.

Agree it's to do with short journeys. When I did a lot of cold start short runs there wouldbe a lot of oil / water emulsion on the oil cap. A few hours on a motorway would see virtually all of it disappear.

Car was like this for several years with no problems.

Driven hard ( 100+ on German motorways) it would use oil, say a litre in 3k miles. Local running around used very little. This at about 100k miles.

 

[lynall]

Guy at work has an omega v6 and he was telling me every winter his oil cap goes all white and gungy but in the summer its fine.


Lynall

 

[Deleted member 16279]

I do a mixture of school and round town runs with a couple of 20ish mile motorway runs a day .
Sounds like you are all in agreement , hope you are right .

Cheers

 

[Barbanasos]

My e240 does exactly the same thing as I do a 1.5 miles to work and back in the afternoon only. Give the cap a clean and the car a good run in the weekends as I am sure it would not be doing the oil any good if it just drips back in.