Complacency!
I had got used to the sight of a bit of water in the vee, some might say an acceptable amount, its not uncommon, is it?
Yesterday, after a week of trouble free daily use, I glanced down to the temp gauge to see the needle in the red! Stopping at our destination shortly afterwards and letting the engine cool for a while I added a couple of pints of water via the top hose plug. There's only a limited number of pint glasses of water a pub feels inclined to offer on a busy Good Friday, so we continued on our way to find the nearest garage with a tap. At the point of finding one I'm afraid the temp gauge was again in the red and on opening the bonnet there was no water in the vee, there was copious amounts of steam!
Letting the engine cool again I added what seemed an awful lot of water, brimming the hose plug. Suffice to say, we got home under our own steam, pardon the pun, with the temp gauge remaining in mid range, the engine ran well but I know something is amiss.
What to do now?
At leased, I have to find where the water/steam leak was and how much worse it may have got. I have my suspicions that its from the inlet manifold gaskets. I hope so anyway as its the easiest to access, next option is the water pump in its useless position and worst case from the head gasket/s.
On a previous attempt to find the source of a more obvious leak I employed the services of a endoscope, it didn't find it. With the engine running, its impossible, even with mini lights and dentist's mirrors to see anything. Stripping the engine down destroys the evidence of a leak, so all you end up doing is replacing seals and gaskets hoping that next time you've done a better job of sealing up the works!
This time as the engine is still running I'm first going to try to use a marker dye to provide evidence of the leak's location and path. Has anyone else used this method and what was your experience?
Regards
John4D
I had got used to the sight of a bit of water in the vee, some might say an acceptable amount, its not uncommon, is it?
Yesterday, after a week of trouble free daily use, I glanced down to the temp gauge to see the needle in the red! Stopping at our destination shortly afterwards and letting the engine cool for a while I added a couple of pints of water via the top hose plug. There's only a limited number of pint glasses of water a pub feels inclined to offer on a busy Good Friday, so we continued on our way to find the nearest garage with a tap. At the point of finding one I'm afraid the temp gauge was again in the red and on opening the bonnet there was no water in the vee, there was copious amounts of steam!
Letting the engine cool again I added what seemed an awful lot of water, brimming the hose plug. Suffice to say, we got home under our own steam, pardon the pun, with the temp gauge remaining in mid range, the engine ran well but I know something is amiss.
What to do now?
At leased, I have to find where the water/steam leak was and how much worse it may have got. I have my suspicions that its from the inlet manifold gaskets. I hope so anyway as its the easiest to access, next option is the water pump in its useless position and worst case from the head gasket/s.
On a previous attempt to find the source of a more obvious leak I employed the services of a endoscope, it didn't find it. With the engine running, its impossible, even with mini lights and dentist's mirrors to see anything. Stripping the engine down destroys the evidence of a leak, so all you end up doing is replacing seals and gaskets hoping that next time you've done a better job of sealing up the works!
This time as the engine is still running I'm first going to try to use a marker dye to provide evidence of the leak's location and path. Has anyone else used this method and what was your experience?
Regards
John4D
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