Oil in coolant

Hi I have a mk5 Jetta with the BRM 1.9 engine 289,xxx miles This morning my coolant light came on and I was prompted to check coolant. I opened it up and there is a milky coolant in there (see pictures). I checked the oil and oils filter and they are perfectly fine, but could not check transmission. I smelled the coolant and smelled some of my left over transmission fluid. They smells are similar. I was wondering if there is anything else I can do to check for symptoms to narrow down between oil cooler and transmission cooler. I don’t think it’s a head gasket but if it is a head gasket I am going to scarp it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Nevermind don’t see picture I can’t add

DSG oil won't ever get very dark, certainly will not ever get black... oil gets black right away. Which is it?

You can put dye in the engine and see if it finds its way into the cooling system.

The engine oil cooler would be my first guess, but I have never seen one fail on a BRM. I have seen one on a BHW and a handful on AWM and AWP engines over the years.

Why on Earth would you "scrap" that car? Shoot, I'll come get it this weekend and give you scrap value for it, I don't care what is wrong with it, I'll fix it.

oilhammer said:

DSG oil won't ever get very dark, certainly will not ever get black... oil gets black right away. Which is it?

You can put dye in the engine and see if it finds its way into the cooling system.

The engine oil cooler would be my first guess, but I have never seen one fail on a BRM. I have seen one on a BHW and a handful on AWM and AWP engines over the years.

Why on Earth would you "scrap" that car? Shoot, I'll come get it this weekend and give you scrap value for it, I don't care what is wrong with it, I'll fix it.

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The coolant is not a dark color. Is it’s a golden honey more or less. Looks like a shiner can of any of y’all drink shiner. I changed the DSG about 15,000 miles so it should be fresh

Sounds more like the ATF cooler may have failed then. Never seen that before either. Again, you could probably add some dye to the fluid and run it and see. May take a while though depending on how bad it is, and in the mean time it could have damaged the cooling system.

oilhammer said:

Sounds more like the ATF cooler may have failed then. Never seen that before either. Again, you could probably add some dye to the fluid and run it and see. May take a while though depending on how bad it is, and in the mean time it could have damaged the cooling system.

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Well I don’t have the time to deal with it right now so I am going to have to let it sit for a while like a couple weeks? Do you think it will hurt it? Thank you for all the help

It might degrade some of the cooling hoses, yes.