Focus ST oil in water

[DaveL485]

Looked at a Focus ST on a 52 plate today, very overdue a service.

It does not have any HG symptoms other than quite a lot of oil floating on the water in the expansion tank. No cold miss, no mayo (in fact considering the neglect its very clean in the rocker cover), compression is OK, no pressurisation etc etc.
It hasnt had a water top up in several years and although a near the min mark, its safe to assume its not losing water. Oil is quite black and very low, but youd expect that with neglect (approx five years since last service)

Has anyone seen an ST with similar issues? Is there somewhere else oil can contaminate the water? Possible head gasket weep into the water channels? I have little experience with fords so figured i'd ask the genius resource oh PH

Thanks in advance.

[davepoth]

If it's not had a service in that long, it's possible that the contamination has come from not a catastrophic HG fail. For example the glycol can begin to break down and leave a bit of film on the top of the coolant.

The only way to know for sure is to do a compression test. If you are looking to buy I would suggest letting the buyer know your concerns and try and work the cost of a HG change into the price.

[DaveL485]

Thanks for the reply. Its a friend of mine and i was just having a look over to service it for him.

[sidgolf]

do these things have an oil/water-cooler?

if they do it could be that that's failing?

[davepoth]

DaveL485 said:

Thanks for the reply. Its a friend of mine and i was just having a look over to service it for him.

Ah right. I'd do the full service and see what happens. 10 minutes of driving to get it warm (or a lot less if the HG is knackered!) won't do it any more harm if the oil is fresh anyway.