Head Gasket Oil in Coolant
 

This is a flollow up to a previous post about oil in the coolant on my M104 C280. I removed some coolant and have pretty much determined that it is engine oil and not trans oil. The coolant has an brown/amber hue, much like most motor oils. My question is this: Why has this occurred twice within 90K miles on a car that has been well cared for? And have there been improvements to the head gaskets to prevent this? Would an after-market gasket be better than a genuine MB part? What, if any, position has MB taken on this obvious defect in engineering? I've owned many cars, some up to 200K miles, and have only had to replace one head gasket.

I use only 1 brand when I do the head gasket jobs on 104 engines. The name is Goetze. I am not sure of the spelling, but it is close.

The gasket they produce is a brown color and the coolant sealant is black. The other one is Elring. it is black with red sealant. I have seen these fail twice on the same engine, after replacing with the Goetze brand, no failures.

Good luck.