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General Information => Troubleshooting => Topic started by: burn_your_money on May 08, 2007, 08:19:48 pm
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The 1.6TD I installed in a 95 golf is not doing to well. The project got rushed and there wasn't alot of time to do alot of around town testing. The car is now 5 hours away and is having cooling problems. The temp gauge crept up to 110 so my friend pulled over and checked the coolant. There was none in the bottle. He let it cool down then topped the coolant up and started driving again. About 3 minutes later it was overheating again so he stopped and all the coolant was gone again. He let it cool and re-filled it. He didn't drive this time and the car was off. In about 3 minutes the resevoir was empty again. There was some coolant on the side of the engine but not as much as he had just put in.
Once the car has been running for about 30 seconds if you remove the res cap coolant will piss out all over the place. Basically the system pressurizes quite quickly. I did try swapping res caps but it was the same issues. You can still squeeze the rad hoses though
The car is currently at a shop and I don't think that the mechanic is very famiar with VW diesels.
Any ideas what would be causing this?
I'm thinking HG but am not sure and am really hoping I am wrong.
There is no contamination oil to coolant or vise versa. Also, when the engine is first started and running if you remove the res cap and put your hand over it you don't feel any presure build up but the opening may not have been fully covered.
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hmmm weird problem!!! i was lucky with my problem only being my thermostat... aroun $25 in parts and some fuel to get the parts later and I'm all fixed... only problem is that i bought a really cold t-stat in case my car does have a weird overheating issue.... which it doesn't!
does the car build up that insane pressure when started ice cold? or when it was warmed up??? if the gauge was reading 110 and there was no coolant, i would cringe to know what the oil temps were like :shock:
i would almost suspect the oil cooler to be honest... but the only issues with the oil cooler that i noticed, were when the motor was at full temp. (somehow the pressure managed to unscrew my oil cap... maybe i didn't tighten it good... but i definitely put it on) when it was cold it seemed fine. if the motor is acting up like that bone cold, then its probably the hg :(
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I'll get more details today but I think it also pressurizes when cold. I don't understand how it could be the oil/coolant heat exchange.
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So the mechanic fixed it. He said that it was over heating on the highway because the rad fan wasn't coming on. He put a manually controlled switch in the dash and has been running it all morning and it hasn't lost a drop of coolant.
Here's hoping 8)
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Hope it's fixed, but why was it puking coolant before? Where was it escaping from the system?
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I think it was from the coolant res overflow or something.. not sure since I wasn't there and my friend couldn't give me a positive ID on where
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Gotcha.
Well, hopefully problem is solved.
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Glad you got the car fixed but im still a little confused. If the car over heated while driving along how can that be to do with the rad fan? The rad fan is to blow air over the rad when the car's stationary, when it's running air blowing in through the front grill should be enough shouldnt it?
If its loosing water and pressurising coolant i would have thought head gasket which has gone between a cylinder and a block coolant pipe, rather than between oil and coolant (mayonnaise oil/water mix) or oil and cylinder (lots blue smoke and loosing oil).
Does it still pressurise the coolant while running?
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yea i'm a little confused too... :?
but at the same time, as soon as you slow down the heat from the oil will start to make the coolant temp rise pretty quick... so it might not be too far off. and going uphill does make quite a bit of heat.
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UPDATE: problem not fixed. 1.5 hours out of town it overheats and pukes coolant. So my friend gets a tow back to town and calls me. I say HG, and we get in motion the steps for me to make a trip up there tomorrow bright and early and do a HG in the hotel parking lot SHHHHH lol.
There are 3 shops in the town he is in, none of them can do a diesel HG. He had it booked at c-tire and thankfully called me when he was still at the store. I told him to go ask the lady at the coutner if the mechanic even knew how to do a HG. She said she wasn't sure but even if he didn't they have c-tires version of the Bentley. I said not good enough, I want to hear it from the mechanic. (I told my friend over the phone and he told her) so she talks to the mechanic and big surprise he doesn't have the tools. He looks at the car and concludes that since there is no oil/coolant mix and the exhaust isn't clean (steam cleaning it) or any white smoke out the exhaust that it can't be the HG. He thinks it's the thermostat. I tell him unlikely but it's cheaper then a HG. So right now my friend is doing the thermostat then he is going to try to make it to Thunder Bay which is 4 hours from where he is. If he makes it then I guess it actually was the thermostat. Personally I don't think he will make it so I told him when he breaks down to tell CAA that he needs to be towed to Thunder Bay because there is a VW dealership there and they can do a HG for him. So I guess we will see. I hate being right :evil:
BTW, he is at the star (north of no where) and needs to get to Edmonton by Monday to start his job
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v603/burnyourmoney/map.jpg)
$550 for labour and parts at the dealership BTW
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550 for a HG job... :roll:
your a good man helping out your buddy!!! for his sake, my money is on the thermostat... maybe even the oil cooler...
remember that i bought a BRAND new t-stat from vw (payed $30 for it... what a rip off for junk) and it opened a little bit at 100 deg C... so my coolant expansion tank test was complete junk... i guess since the coolant in the expansion tank isn't as hot as way in the motor...
also sounds like he might not be keeping an eye on his temps very well.... easing off the pedal will definitely make the temps go down... with all this coolant puking he will be lucky if his head isn't warped/damaged...
thats going to be like... a 24 hour drive to get to edmonton right??? i feel for him... lots of coffee! rather get there tired and sleep for a night, than get there and not be able to rest...
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Yeah I stressed to him the importance of making sure not to run it without coolant and to never let it go above 110.
It's actually a 36 hour drive from here.
If he did manage to warp the head I guess I'll have to overnight him one of mine.. I'm sure the dealer will be looking at him with big greedy eyes.
I built the car so I feel repsonsible even though all I did was install the engine and then stuff for safety... nothing regrading the engine.
It's him and his girlfriend going out, and both are just learning to drive standard. I'm sure there are lots of things that they may be doing that are not helping the situation with their driving styles but there is nothing I can do about that.
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hmmmm hard lessons learned about diesels then :(
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New update. If he keeps his speed at 80 he doesn't overheat but it will run at 100. At c-tire they did a vacuum test on the cooling system and it held a steady -25PSI. Apparently this means the HG is good? Anyone know any details on a vacuum test?
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that has thermostat written all over it... my car was doing the same thing... if i drove 100km/h with the heater blowing the temp gauge would stay in check... anytime a hill came around my temps would creep right up and i would ease off a bit (people didn't really like me, but oh well)
in the winter time it was fantastic! -20C outside and theres more heat than i knew what to do with!!! :lol:
-25PSI is pretty big... i think there would be a leak if the hg was the issue. but at the same time the pressures inside the cylinders can actually lift certain spots of the head under hard driving conditions... hard to say if you can actually reproduce actual driving conditions with a vacuum.
edit: does his temps rise when he slows down, or speeds up??? before my fan blew on me, it was working intermittantly... if his car has a/c then his fan is pretty much guaranteed to be going...
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In a previous car (Chev Corsica) I had a pressure test done on the cooling system. Worked well and confirmed a cracked block. Never had a vacuum test performed though.
But in thinking about what a vacuum does, is it not possible that by applying vacuum that it pulls things closed (small leaks in a HG perhaps). I'm not sure, but I would think that by applying pressure, you would get a better indication of what the cooling system was like. Just a thought.
For your friend's sake, I hope it is the t-stat. He's lucky to have a friend like you.
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Well it all got worse last night as he was trying to limp it to Thunder Bay. He was getting near instant pressurazatio as soon as he added more coolant. I warned him about adding cold coolant to a hot engine, hopefully he took that to heart.
I agree that a vacuum test could pull small leaks shut, hence my confusion with that method.
He is on his way to the dealership and I'm really hoping for the best here. It's a 300km tow from where he is right now, CAA is covering 200km of that and then they start charging him at CAA rates. $2.45 a km. I told him that's BS and to get dropped off when the free tow ends and call a company from Thunder Bay and just get a flat rate of like $150.
He did replace the thermostat and the car was giving the exact same symptoms of the old thermostat, which was also only a week old. When I drove the car around town I took it on a 10 minute highway run and I pushed it hard, it never went over 90. I also pushed it as hard as I could around town and the coolant temp gauge held solid at 90. I know how quirky these thermostats can be though.
He doesn't have AC but the first mechanic ran a manual switch to the cabin so it is always turned on.
All I know about the speed/temp relation ship is that above 80 it did overheat but below it it wouldn't. He played around with it at various speeds to fnid the right one so I'd imagine it did make a difference.
I can see this being HG and also thermostat at the same time but with a repaced thermostat I don't know...
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Im no mechanic but isn't testing pressure in a coolant system which jtanguay reckons may have a jammed thermostat potentially flawed as you may just end up testing the pressure in the area outside the block.
If the thermostat is knackered then removing and running the car without it in would surely cause it to run a little colder and stop loosing coolant until he gets to the dealer. Although im not sure how advisable this is with canadian climate. This would also prove the thermostat being at fault.
Once at a dealer if its still pressurizing the coolant even without a thermostat in they should be able to do a compression test to prove if the HG is gone, altho i cant see what else it could be.
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I thought that completely removing the thermostat was a bad idea because it allowed too much coolant to flow in direct X and not enough in direction Y.
BTW it's nice and warm in this part of Canada, low 20s :)
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So he's at a shop... $86/h sweet. They haven't even done anything yet and they are saying he needs a new head. I told him to have them look at it first and if it isn't warped and the cracks aren't huge then just re-use it. :roll:
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he should have bought c-tire's cheapest t-stat... it will ensure that the system will not pressurize much at all, and its a good bandaid... especially since warm weather is approaching! That way at least he can shop around and find a decent mechanic that won't overcharge, and get the problem solved for good.
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Low 20's they're temperatures i can only dream of at the moment! I thought canada was supposed to be freezing cold and covered with mooses, so long as the stereotype holds true anyway. Which, sadly, in england it is, seeing as its been raining all evening :(
Apologies for the misleading info, i was just firing off some ideas. I'll end my specualtions with a row of ???? in future to avoid confusion.
Did the garage even say what was wrong when they suggested a new head?
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really depends on where you are i guess... today it was around 25C, but the humidity made it pretty hot. yay for a/c!
sometimes it's hard to breathe when it's really humid.