Lucky Miss

[blueka]

I drove back from Liverpool to my home in Rushden, Northants on Monday night/ Tuesday morning and noticed that the heater wasn't very hot and the windows were all misting up.
Anyway, I got up late yesterday so didn't really get a chance to check under the bonnet, I just assumed that the flap had stuck because I'd had the aircon on so the car was just blowing re-circ'd air...

Anyway, I got under the bonnet this evening and the header tank was bone dry, so I checked the oil and there was no contamination.. luckily.
Out with the housepipe and as i'm filling it up the water's going everywhere...

closer inspection reveals that the pipe that comes from across the top of the rad to the header tank has fell down on the fan belt which has eaten a big hole in it...

I cut the offending hole out and put the pipe back on.....

on the drive to work tonight, the windows were still misting up though...

does anyone have any ideas what's causing this?
could there be an airlock??

cheers

Si

 

[eskimo]

Hi Si,

Very lucky mate not to have done any major damage

As for the heater not working right, the best way I have found of refilling a water system is to open the vents and turn the heater up to max both temp and fans.

Then raise the front of the car up some ramps/driveway or similar and remove the radiator cap to allow the air bubbles to escape.

Now run the engine up to normal operating temp and wait until the bubbles have stopped coming out of the rad - also keep filling the rad if necessary to ensure that there is still enough water in the system. Once the bubbles have stopped then top the rad up to the max and replace the rad cap. Then make sure that you're getting hot air out of the vents, and then make sure that the expansion tanks is at the right level as well.

I've used this method a couple of times on my old Mitsi and on my old Range Rover and V8 powered Land Rover and never had any problems.

Good luck

Hope this helps

Cheers

Carl

 

[Blee1099]

Does it smell like rotten eggs? If so it may be a bad heater core.

 

[blueka]

I'd overfilled the header tank...

the water was pouring out of a pipe on the bulkhead, possibly an overflow...

the smell is like when your car overheats....

Si