possible head gasket blow

[jock]

on the way back from work my cooling fan came on and i smelt a horrible pong. looked inside to find header tank covered in a thick milk chocolate covered slime.

have tried to bleed most of gunge out of radiator and header tank but still get no warm air from heater not sure whether or not block is gunge free inside thermostat etc.

when asking in local garage he said seen fault on audi with oil cooler/heat exchanger unit also mates girlfriend ford had similar so wondered if anyone here has had or heard of this fault on williams ?

anyone happen to know how much the oil coolers are or how to tell if it knackered. got to be cheaper than taking head off first. thanks

[Coops]

oil cooler is a water exchange effort ai, located behind the oil filter itself on the front on the block. unlikely to be that tho tbh. get a compression test done to check all is well in the engine!

If no heat coming thats different issue, thats the heater matrix blocked. if u whip off the pipes going to it through bulkhead under the header tank u can maybe get away with flushing the system with a good hose (bit of pressure!) but if not its change the matrix time, git of a job as u have to moneouvere the dash forward and out to get at it!

[jock]

I know that the matrix is definately clogged with gunge or now airlocked as heater worked fine before problem started.
My problem is that i was going to take it to nick hill for a cambelt change shortly but now cant drive it anywhere unless i can flush the gunge out succesfully and get an idea of how quickly it is going to fill up again.
My thought was that if it took 4 days to get bad enough to stop the water circulating then it would last 1.5 hour drive to hillpower. (Is ther some stuff i can buy to help clean the waterways?)

OR if the oil was coming through the oil cooler into the cooling water then i could blank off that bit of the system and stop the engine overheating and just have an oil leak to worry about. (or get a new oil cooler) any thoughts or suggestions much appreciated!!!

[jock]

It was the head gasket, blown between oil feed to head and water gallery,so fillng up cooling system with oil. now fixed
now only crack in screen to get fixed and back on the road.