Thread: White smoke from oil filer cap and dipstick

Hi Guys,

Im new to this forum, but i have a pretty serious question to put out to you people about a Seat Ibiza im thinking of buying

Im currently looking at a 2005 Seat Ibiza 1.9TDI Sport
1 lady owner from new and has nearly 20,000 miles

Im pretty confident that the miles are genuine but the engine is showing some strange signs....

I took the car for a good test drive, drove pretty agressively to try and find any problems. Drove the car for around 20 mins before bringing it back

On bringing it back i did a few of my usual checks, 2 being to see if there was any smoke comming from the oil filter cap and the dipstick. I was surprised to find white smoke comming from both places, with a grey-ish white "mayonaise" type gunk on the oil filler cap

I have read other forums and contacted my mechanic and alot of people say that if a car doesnt get much long driving (ie getting the car up to temp) it can cause moisture buildup in the oil system and thus cause the car to blow out steam from the oil filler cap (highest point in the system). Other people immediatly say head gasket is about to go....

Im pretty sure that if the head gasket was about to go i would be getting white smoke out the exhaust as well, and perhaps some performance issues while driving (which i did not encounter during the test drive), but before and after the test drive there wasnt the slightest sign of any smoke at all.....

Basically what im asking is has anybody here seen similar issues with any Seats...

Originally Posted by paultop6

Hi Guys,

Im new to this forum, but i have a pretty serious question to put out to you people about a Seat Ibiza im thinking of buying

Im currently looking at a 2005 Seat Ibiza 1.9TDI Sport
1 lady owner from new and has nearly 20,000 miles

Im pretty confident that the miles are genuine but the engine is showing some strange signs....

I took the car for a good test drive, drove pretty agressively to try and find any problems. Drove the car for around 20 mins before bringing it back

On bringing it back i did a few of my usual checks, 2 being to see if there was any smoke comming from the oil filter cap and the dipstick. I was surprised to find white smoke comming from both places, with a grey-ish white "mayonaise" type gunk on the oil filler cap

I have read other forums and contacted my mechanic and alot of people say that if a car doesnt get much long driving (ie getting the car up to temp) it can cause moisture buildup in the oil system and thus cause the car to blow out steam from the oil filler cap (highest point in the system). Other people immediatly say head gasket is about to go....

Im pretty sure that if the head gasket was about to go i would be getting white smoke out the exhaust as well, and perhaps some performance issues while driving (which i did not encounter during the test drive), but before and after the test drive there wasnt the slightest sign of any smoke at all.....

Basically what im asking is has anybody here seen similar issues with any Seats...

Sounds like the gasket is on its way out... BUT i had the same on my MG TF and still 9 months later im still tearing around the roads.. but my water coolant does tend to go low every month or so