Dacia Sandero Engine Failure Risk

Engine-oil mayonnaise. The vehicle needs to be towed to the dealer/repair shop. It's probably the head-gasket as the magic one says. What year and how many km's on it?

I'd echo the others, looks like a severe oil leak. Crazy of the dealer to drive it but that's their problem now. As annoying it is to deal with, I'd look to get a replacement car and consider yourself lucky that you won't have to pay anything for repairs as it will be a relatively extensive job.

I'd say that's a replacement engine. There's no good that could possible come from that level of oil mix. That's either long running or a very catastrophic failure between the cooling side and the business side of the engine block.

You've about >< this much hope of swapping a year old car.... that's not a sensible option regardless of how the engine went. It's warrantied. It'll probably be swapped and should be.

It certainly looks bad, and the warning message all but confirms it.

As an aside, my sister had a Corsa which had similar mayo under the oil cap, but never lost a drop of coolant. I think it was just condensation, due to successive very short trips every day.

The tank is packed with oil mix. Not just some on the lid tbf. Imagine how all the pipes look.

Does a 1l even have an oil cooler?

That's typically a condensate buildup which becomes an emulsion and then sits under the oil cap. You're right, that's not a concern, but buckets of mayo in the cooler header sure is!

Yes, it’s the Renault 1.0 turbo engine.

Do those cars have a temperature gauge? If not, I'd wager the engine failure message is because it's running quite hot. Agree on the face of it that this looks like head gasket failure and is something those baby Renault engines are known for

Google "renault 0.9 tce engine problems". The HB4 engine has popped head gaskets and chewed timing chains. The newer 1.2TCE and 1.3TCe's are problematic too. Separate to the engines, the Renault electrics in some of them are comical. I've replaced a few UPC's for the weirdest faults imaginable.

You want to make sure that entire coolant system is crystal clear when you get it back and monitor it going forward for a good few weeks. Every bit of oil needs to be flushed out of it.