Question about blown head gasket

[e32lover Member Find all posts View Profile Close e32lover]

Hi, My friend has a car, an E34 BMW 535i, it has seen better days to say the least, and has had a blown head gasket for the past few years (coolant leaking into oil lines). It has still been going strong with regular oil changes, i know it will eventually die, but its not worth fixing, just wondering is it better to run coolant or water? I heard coolant can do severe damage to the top of the engine.

Thanks.

[Sandgroper Valued Member Find all posts View Profile Close Sandgroper]

A friend of mine had the same problem on his 6 cylinder 3 series and found it better to just replace the engine with a second hand one, he was told it could be a real can of worms once you start stripping it and could end up costing big$. His engine still went hard even with the problem but it was slowly getting worse. He ended up with a second hand imported one with about 40k on it and though he has had no trouble with it he did say it seemed down on power compared to the original one.