GolfGTIforum.co.uk
Model specific boards => Golf mk2 => Topic started by: NuTTs on 31 October 2006, 16:21
-
Hi all,
I've recently had a few small coolant hoses split and dirty my immaculate engine bay.. I've replaced the hoses and flushed the cooling system the best I could. I also had a problem with mayo-like gunk in the cooling system, which was diagnosed by rubjonny (thanks mate) as an oil cooler failure.. all the crud is out of the cooling system now (i think). So I've refilled the cooling system with 50/50 antifreeze and water and have followed the bleeding methods listed in the forum and all the hoses get hot as they should. No more bubbles come out of the expansion tank so I thought all was fine.
I then took the golf for a drive (1991 8V GTI) and when I came back there was coolant gurgling and spewing out of the expansion tank!!! Also there was a smell of burning oil in the engine bay with associated smoke. I opened the oil filler and it was red hot.. smoke was coming out of the filler cap!!
Now I've had my share of VW's and all have had cooling issues- but this is just plain scary. What am I doing wrong and what could have gone wrong??
The car has always worked fine during the past year and a half that I've owned the vehicle but all of a sudden I'm having these problems. The heater stopped heating all of a sudden also so I thought it could be an airlock in the cooling system - any thoughts?
I'm worried I may (or may already have) fried the head gasket!
Please give me any thoughts you may have...
Regards,
Kurt
-
Check your radiator fan is working, easiest way to do this is unplug the connector at the bottom passenger side of the radiator, and bridging the pins on the plug. The fan should come on slow & fast speeds. Then run the engine till the temp gets to just over half way, the fan should then cut in at slow speed. If not, the sender in the rad is buggered!
It may be your waterpump has failed, when you rev the engine do you notice coolant flowing out of the coolant return at the top of the header tank, where the thin hose connects?
-
Hi Rubjonny, the fan has always worked until the coolant hoses ripped a couple of weeks ago on both speeds. When I rev the engine with the expansion cap open coolant doesn't flow from the return pipe but it "raises up" in the expansion tank. The most worrying thing is the burning oil - I really hope I don't cook the motor on this baby!
As tomorrow is a bank holiday in Spain I'll be at home and I'll try re-flushing and filling the coolant and bleeding it to the best of my ability. could the expansion tank (round with blue cap) easily split... as the coolant that spills out of there is under a black plastic cover.
Regards,
NuTTs
-
The tanks can fail, but the caps are a far more common weak point, so worth replacing.
Next I'd disconnect the thin pipe from the header tank and blow through it, just in case it got clogged up with oil or crud. If it gets blocked it will prevent your coolant system from bleeding properly, as this is where any air bubbles are forced out to the header tank.
Check the rad fan again just in case its decided to blow up at the same time as everything else :grin:
-
Cool.. thanks for the help. I´ll get to that in the daylight tomorrow.. although I do have the urge to get the worklights out on the driveway and start working now!
I´ve been searching through the archives and past posts etc. and found quite a few people have had the typical - cold radiator, coolant seeping out of expansion tank, heating not working, low coolant light flashing.. the problem is that no two cases seem the same or have the same solution.
I think this topic would be great to have as a sticky with the definative solution (once we find it).
I´ll let you know how I get along.
Regards,
Kurt
-
I assume you did replace the oil cooler and drain and re fill your oil?
-
If there was alot of coolant in the oil it might be an idea to do that (mayo under the cap) But normally there wont be as oil is under much higher pressure than coolant in the cooler so oil will only get into the coolant, not the other way round.
What little gets into the oil is soon burned off after a good long drive :)
-
Either way if its failed it needs replacing. To do so you would need to drain the oil anyway.
-
indeed, but its ok to leave it for now while he fixes the other problems. Mine was like that for months! Problem was I lost quite a bit of oil out of it, so basically it had several sumpfulls of oil thru it before I ripped the bottom end out for my 2.0 conversion :grin:
-
Cant say id want to run my coolant as oily sludge for a month! not even a day!
-
Eh? Mate we were talking about changing the oil, where did coolant come into all this? :grin:
As you can see he's already cleaned & flushed all the oil out of the coolant, as I did when my cooler went ;)
-
My point was that if the oil cooler failed and contaminated the coolant, simply flushing out the coolant and re-filling will not work as the oil will continue to contaminate the coolant until the oil cooler is replaced.
-
Oh right sorry, I should have added 'after the oil cooler was bypassed' in my last post. I was thinking it though. What, you cant read my mind?! :grin:
I'm sure NuTTs has bypassed the cooler also, this is what I told him to do before flushing the coolant to diagnose if the oil in the header tanks was due to head gasket or oil cooler failure :)
-
Forgot to mention.. oil cooler is on order from VW and should arrive friday this week or monday next week. In the meantime I did an oil and filter change and the oil was not contaminated with coolant or water (nowt floating around the oil or vice versa).
Another thing I did notice was that the coolant hoses were quite hard when the coolant tank cap is on - this may point to a major airlock or a leaking head gasket.
It´s really weird though, the engine smells as if it´s over heating when it has been running for 5-10 mins.. and it does smell like burnt engine oil.
Unfortunately I wasn´t able to get to the car this morning as my motorcycle outing took a bit longer than the 2 hours I thought. Let´s see if the missus gives me a couple of hours this afternoon to investigate a bit further.
I know it seems a bit daft doing an oil and filter change without having the oil cooler ring swapped out or the coolant tank & cap swapped out but I´m just trying to do with what I have.. once the parts arrive from VW I´ll have more real options at hand.
BTW I´ve never had any coolant in the engine that I know of.. exhaust smell is not sweet as it would characteristacally be if coolant was weeping past the head gasket.
Thanks for all the help
NuTTs
-
hmm, let us know how you get on!
The coolant hoses should get resonably hard as the system presurises, but its hard to say how much is good hard, and how much is bad hard if you get me :grin:
Where is the temp gauge reading when you start to smell burnt oil?
It is possible for the HG to fail between & oil & water channel, and not into one of the bores. It took about a fortnight of daily driving before coolant from my blown oil cooler was thick enough to be seen in the headertank, so it must have been a small leak or it only opened up once the engine got up to temp. (assuming it was the oil flush I'd done before dropping the sump that killed it)
If everything checks out I'd invest in a compression tester, and see if any of the cylinders are obviously down in pressure.
-
Update:
I´ve tried bleeding the cooling system again (in the dark) and sure enough, quite a bit of air came out of the header tank and nearly no crud surfaced (good sign.. I think) on the water-coolant mixture. All the hoses warmed up well except the lower one (engine oil temp at 116 degrees according to MFA) and engine coolant temp didn´t reach half way.
1. Radiator fan doesn´t turn on
2. No fluid comes through the overflow pipe
3. Bottom radiator hose still cold - Thermostat has probably gone kaput
4. Heating still doesn´t work (it has always worked until the oil/crap in header tank scenario).
So, in conclusion tomorrow I´ll be visiting the VW service centre and buying a new thermostat, water pump impeller (do I need to buy the whole pump?), new header tank and cap, push on the oil cooler order if it hasnt arrived yet.
I´ll try find a weekend when I can remove radiator and whole cooling system hoses etc, water pump, oil cooler and then methodically put the new parts in and put the system together.
Just as well I´m buying another second hand car (Range Rover.. yes I know it may look like I´m asking for trouble) as the GTI may be out of action for a few weeks and I need reliable transport to get my kid to school etc.
Thank you everyone for all your help. I´ll bump the thread back once I´ve replaced all the possible bits that could have gone wrong.
Regards,
NuTTs
-
Hi Guys.. I´ve been off the forum for a while as the golf project was put aside. Since then I´ve been through a Range Rover LSE and a e34 M5 (just sold it today :cry:).
Since my last post I drained the cooling system again and oil. I removed all the coolant hoses, radiator, oil cooler etc. I bought and installed a new oil cooler, oil filter, coolant hoses (all original VW parts), temp sender/fan switch. Rubjonny, you were spot on. Problem fixed!!!
I´ll be taking the car for it´s MOT (ITV here in Spain) and then be back on the road again!!
Now, anyone know how to get rid of the mold-fungus that is growing on the door cards and seats/seatbelts?
Regards,
NuTTs
-
A mild soapy water solution should do it, and a nail brush. I assume in Spain you have enough warm weather to allow the interior to dry properly unlike here atm! If you can strip the seats down, the bsase covers come off quite easily but the uprights take a bit more work.