Ok so here's the background. I bought this from original owner back in April 2019. Had a mechanic check it out so presumably there was no sludge under the oil filler cap, or smoking from the dipstick or oil filler cap or exhaust at that time (unfortunately I wasn't particularly sophisticated about cars at the time, i learned a hellauva lot more since then). Mechanic did say he felt it was slighly oil "wet" under Turbo - implying a possible very low flow oil leak. I bought the car from north NJ and drove it 2 1/2 hrs to south NJ with no issues.

Now for the next 6 MONTHS (no exaggeration) all I did was basically run the car twice a week for just enough time to move it to alternate sides of the street to avoid getting parking tickets (I didn't use it because of percieved electrical gremlins, but i resolved them, it was just my ignorance at the time). Also worth noting is that I live right on the NJ shore a block from the beach.

Now i finally got my crap together, know much more about the car than before, due some simple electrical maintenence work and fire up the car. No more electrical gremlins. HOWEVER, upon other inspections of my vehicle I notice that there's white creamy sludge under the oil filler cap (however i didn't notice any on the dipstick). In addition, there's light smoke (maybe Vapor?) coming out from both the oil filler hole and the dipstick sheath, as well as some amount of white smoke from the tailpipe (not a whole lot, but some).

So here's my question. Given that the car has literally been run so little for the past six months (and certainly not long enough to reach operating temperature) I'm torn between the worse diagnoses of a Head gasket issue to the less worse diagnoses of a crapload of water in the crankcase from condensation.

What do you fellow Volvo'ers think?

Also, could excessive condensation even cause all three -the filler hole, the dipstick, and the exhaust- to emitt white smoke?

 

yes I've seen condensation foam on our old 850T when it didn't get driven long enough to heat up fully. I've also seen smoke from the filler cap / dipstick happen when the PCV system got clogged and need to be serviced. If you do an oil change and take the car for a long drive (say half an hour) and don't see any foam, I'd say the head gasket is fine. If after that you still see some foaming, you can also do the rubber glove test to see if there's some crank case pressure built up. You can do a HC test on the antifreeze if you suspect a head gasket (kits run about $40) and do a wet/dry compression test to see if you have a ring issue allowing too much blow-by.

 

I think it may just be nothing.

Extra info: The exhaust is not affected by water in the oil. Combustion is the source of the water, so the exhaust always contains a lot of water. In the summer, when it's hot, you can't see it. There is a temperature where it becomes visible. If you blow a head gasket and water enters the cylinders, then you can get more water in the exhaust than normal, and of course it becomes "more" visible.