Hello
Im working on a friends R53 that was loosing coolant and overheated. I have good compression, no signs of the traditional white smoke out the tailpipe but a fair amount of coolant in the oil. Coolant shows no signs of oil intrusion but as mentioned oil definitely does. I use to work on quit a few euro cars with heat exchange oil coolers but in my experience if the cooler goes bad its usually the oil that gets mixed in the cooling system. Looking to see if anyone here had been down this road before tear down. Thanks all.

 

 

Correct. I had a cooler failure on my R53 which was discovered as oil in my coolant. If you're interested in reading up on it, the thread is HERE.

In your case unfortunately, it looks like the head gasket has failed.