Hi,

Today I was out rebuilding my monovalve, and had out my digital camera, so took a pic of the drops of oil in my recovery bottle.
The drops are never more that what you see in the picture. They look fairly black, so I would have to guess that they are motor oil.
For the last 12K plus miles, the drops have been about the same in quantity. I flushed the system once, and they showed back up a few days and hunderds of miles later, in the same amount. No sign of a pressure leak overboard from the cylinder to the coolant, no coolant in the oil, and just this tiny bit of oil in the coolant. No sign of cooling system efficiency loss, the temp is always great.
Is this something to worry about? Despite probably nearly 20K miles since I first noticed this (no idea how long before that there were drips) there has been no change in the amount of drops oranything like that, and the car runs great.
Is some drips normal? I have read many times that diesel heads all have small cracks in them from the pressure, so maybe some timy bit of oil like this is common? I would like to not have to do a head job on the car, as I dont have the $$$. What are the chances of something minor like this erupting into a major failure without a lot of notice beforehand (like more oil showing up, or some other characteristic of a bad head gasket, etc)?

Any info/comments would be appreciated.
Thanks

JMH

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Current Diesels:
1981 240D (73K)
1982 300CD (169k)
1985 190D (169k)
1991 350SD (116k)
1991 350SD (206k)
1991 300D (228k)
2008 ML320 CDI (199k)
1996 Dodge Ram CTD (442k)
1996 Dodge Ram CTD (267k)

Past Diesels:
1983 300D (228K), 1985 300D (233K), 1993 300D 2.5T (338k), 1993 300SD (291k)