red/white film floating in coolant

[Lateralus]

Yesterday I opened up my coolant reservoir and noticed a strange redish colored liquid floating around the top of the water. (I'll try to get a picture in a little bit)

My car does need a valve cover gasket but I don't think that would have anything to do with it, but could this also be a sign of head gasket failure and/or a cracked head?

I'm going to try a coolant flush this weekend and see what happens but just wanted to see if anyone else has had anything simular happen.

Engine seems to run fine but i do have alot of condensation coming from the exhaust =/

edit: Almost looks like... oil

[Inodoro Pereyra]

That is not oil. It looks to me like somebody ran the car for a long time on straight water, and that's some kind of biofilm (maybe some kind of algae) that grew on the surface of the water.

Do a radiator flush, and then fill your system with the right mixture of water and coolant (50/50), and then keep an eye on it. If you have a head gasket problem, the coolant will bubble more or less intensely, when the engine is running, and/or you will see a milky film (pretty much the color of the foam on a macchiato), floating on top of the water, but that's very uncommon. Most of the times, is the water that gets into the oil, not the other way around.

[stereoking15]

Is your car an automatic? If it is the red atf (automatic transmission fluid) is mixing with your coolant via the radiator because the atf is cooled from your radiator and a internal pipe is leaking and putting atf in your coolant and coolant in your atf so also check to see if your atf looks like strawberry milkshake. If it does you need a new radiator.

[RedAutobotMX3]

Hey Lateralus, just thought I'd say something since i recognized the issue from /o/ the other day. I go by Gosai_Ijin over there but got banned for calling the MOD out on being a not so nice thing. When i got my first MX-3 it had some sediment in the overflow tank, and was pretty murky, but it ran fine no problems. I'll be doing a coolant flush in old red once I get the salvage title back from the state and start getting it ready for my girl friend to buy off me.

[Lateralus]

Thanks for the answers guys, glad it's not oil. And my car is a 5 speed so it's not atf either.

Probably is just from someone running straight water in it (which i think the previous owner was doing) It also sat for a year and a half.

I'll post again once i get it flushed, hope it's nothing major.

[ccreech]

Speaking of flushed. It looks like the stuff that grows on the inner walls of a toilet bowl when it sits for a long time without being cleaned. Umm...Not that I would know what that looks like or anything...I mean I have heard of that kind of thing before...yeah.

Like the previous posts said. I think its just some sort of growth from probably too much water, not enough coolant. Flush that toilet bowl scum.