Oil in coolant?

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A bit of an odd one. It seems as though the coolant in my partners car is very dark brown, almost looks like there's oil inside it. No mayo on the oil filler cap though so I don't think it's the head gasket. And weirdly, the low coolant level light came on earlier today, however the level seems absolutely fine. And no, I haven't had any Johnny foreigners putting oil in the coolant. Any idea of what the issue might be?

Its a 2011 Astra 1.6 VVT Elite if that makes any difference.

Any suggestions or advice would be much appreciated!

@ Mods - can't find a specific Vauxhall section to put my query in, hence have put it as general.

[Miserablegit]

When did you last check or replace the coolant?
Get some out on a rag and see if it is oily.

If there’s corrosion in the system that wil be the reason for the dark brown coolant

[anonymous-user]

Probably is head gasket, depending on how it fails you may get oil in the coolant but not the other way round. If the car has an oil cooler that could have failed too.

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I've put a rag in the coolant and it's come out very brown, smells a tad oily too. The coolant was replaced 12 months ago.

Not sure how to check if these things have an oil cooler or not. Euro car parts don't seem to even list this a part for this engine either, which possibly leads me to think it hasn't got one, right?

There's no smoke from the exhaust either, and its not overheating. And it seems to drive perfectly fine.

Not really sure what to do.

[MG CHRIS]

From working on Vauxhall its usually the oil cooler, the oil cooler is attached to the oil filter housing, the cooler part sits behind the exhaust manifold which gets hot and dries up the seals in the cooler.

Edited by MG CHRIS on Tuesday 9th February 20:24

Edited by MG CHRIS on Tuesday 9th February 20:25

[Chedders]

As above, oil cooler gasket needs replacing - very common problem.