530i oil consumption & coolant loss

[john <j.s.smith@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Re: 530i oil consumption & coolant loss

Just bought it a thousand miles ago, and after changing to
Mobile 1 synthetic oil, I noticed it consumed a quart in
that 1000 miles of driving...  And, worse yet, seems to have
consumed about 1/2 gal of water as well.  So, will simple
pressure tests of the cooling system tell me anything great
about a possible head gasket leak on this 3.0L aluminum V8?
Yes, it's the original engine with 81K miles on it, and it
runs great...

I don't thnk it'll run great for long though. That water has got to be
going somewhere
and if there's no leak in the cooling system it's either in the sump or
going out the exhaust.
Probably a compression test will show up the problem. Is there sludge
under the camcover (rather than just oil)? I say "probably" about the
compression test because strange things can be read into the result. I
just checked my log of when I had a cyl head failure on my '89 325i in
1996.
The readings I got were:
6    5   4   3   2  1
150 158 180 180 158 175

The fault turned out to be a "porus" cyl head with water "mist" between
sections cyl 4 and 3. Good thing 
I had the pressure test done too because first guesimate was that it was
"just" the head gasket
gone. If I'd re-assembled the whole thing only to find the fault still
there I whould not have
been very pleased :-) 

The symptoms of the above were a *sudden* loss of coolant (a couple of
pints in 20 miles or so) which got rapidy worse. Sludge under the cam
cover. The car was still running beautifully!!! What an engine eh!

Hope this helps - sorry is not better news.

- -John
ps This failure happened at just over 100 000 miles.

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