Tiny bubbles around edge of oil cap and 'greyness' inside?

[Gords333]

Bit of advice needed.
I am in the market to buy a Skoda Octavia Estate. I saw one... 2016, 35,000 on the clock at £10,000, which for me is a lot of money. I want to buy a good car that will last. I researched the car and failing a bad test drive I would have bought it. The car was from a Skoda Dealership, has a 12 month warrantee, so this put my mind at rest. A chap from Skoda drove the car 2 hours away for me to test drive it. Very impressed with that. I gave the car a good look over, I'm no mechanic but aware of what to look out for. When I looked at the oil cap I noticed tiny bubbles around the edge of it. Not seen that before in my limited experience. When I looked inside the cap it wasn't pure black shiny oil but had a grey tinge to it? The Skoda chap said that it was probably due to water getting in due to steam cleaning/valenting the engine. I just knew I couldn't buy it, I was gutted! It wasn't milky white sludge, but grey. When parting with that amount of cash I had to rely on my limited knowledge of this subject, it wasn't right. I did get an email back from the dealership saying that another customer was interested in this car. They told the new customer why I hadn't bought it so they got a RAC inspection done and it passed with flying colours. Can anyone shed any light on this greyness inside the oil cap and also the tiny bubbles around the edge of the cap itself please? Its such a minefield buying a car. Thanks

[Scrump]

Caused by moisture reacting with the oil vapour. If the car has been stood a while, especially in the winter, then moisture will get into the engine. If the car is only driven short journeys (like test drives) and never has the chance to get properly hot then this moisture will not evaporate fully.

This causes a milky emulsion around the filler cap. It is on the filler cap because that is usually colder than the rest of the engine and so it condenses there.

[abzmike]

Back in the old days that was a blown head gasket. Usually not terminal, but needed fixed.

[A1VDY]

The very reason we clean the oil filler cap and inside the cover thoroughly when we service before sale before putting a car on site.
Obviously if it's milky sludge it's investigated for possible head gasket problems but 99% of the time it's just a little condensation build up on cars which do short journeys..

[Krikkit]

abzmike said:

Back in the old days that was a blown head gasket. Usually not terminal, but needed fixed.

I wonder how many head gaskets have been done erroneously on engines which simply needed a good run up to temperature to get rid of it, and maybe a wipe down of the oil cap...

[steveo3002]

like they said its been steam cleaned , then might have sat in the yard for weeks being started for a few mins here n there

[Zener]

steveo3002 said:

like they said its been steam cleaned , then might have sat in the yard for weeks being started for a few mins here n there

This ^ its probably been shunted from here to there around the dealer without getting up to temp I would imagine , its common practice in dealerships car fronts etc , moving stock around etc etc