'87 535i question

[Dash01]

My brother has an '87 535i with water and fuel in the exhaust. No indication of oil contamination such as milky color, etc, but rather just water and unburned fuel in the exhaust.

Other than a bad headgasket, what might cause this?

[Tiger]

Cracked head.... but most likely the gasket.

[ahlem]

Put some dye in the radiator, the kind that shows green with a black light and see if water is getting through from the cooling system.

[SnakeyesTx]

How much water are we talking about here? It could just be the catalytic converter doing it's job and your engine running excessively rich.

I've got an 87 535 as well, and that's all mine turned out to be. A few of the plugs were a little wet with fuel but then again, my M30 was in desparate need of a valve adjustment as well. There's a few writeups on mye28.com's forums about how to do that.

[shogun]

in case there is no loss of coolant, why should he worry? I assume he only drives short distances, the answer to that see comments of Snakeeyes.
Let him drive a longer distance that the cat gets really hot/to operating temperature. Short distances even allow fuel to enter the oil.
Experts believe that one start is equivalent to 500 miles of normal driving. Danger of oil dilution.