water flow

[frankerooney]

Just finished the head gasket on my scirocco. Started her up tonight and all is running ok! Though I'm a bit concerned about the flow of water through the expansion tank.
On my golf, when it's cold, the overflow hose from the radiator has a good steady flow of water through it and when you rev it up it sprays out the overflow quite nicely. On the scirocco though, nothing comes out when it's idling, maybe a slight spurt now and then but nothing constant. If you rev it up the water splutters out a bit, but not what I'd expect going from the Golf. Is this a problem? I'm not sure how the thermostat, and flow (or lack of) through the radiator would affect the flow into the expansion tank when the car is cold? The car has had a new water pump before I bought it, and coincidentally, the head gasket went pretty soon after the pump was changed (not ruling out overheating when the actual pump went though). The car didn't overheat on the gauge when the gasket had gone, but that doesn't mean it wasn't overheating the gasket and local parts of the block/head..
Cheers for any replies!  

[Veedubgt18v]

reverse flush the system and rad i spose a piece of gasket or crap souls have got in and blocked somewhere. try that for starters

[frankerooney]

Cheers for the reply veedub. I gave it a good flush yesterday, including removing the thermostat and reverse flushing. I  think I've sort of fixed it, but am not sure how really! I noticed that on  my golf the radiator overflow pipe has a constant fall on it down to the rad, but on the scirocco, it had been passed over the top of the main water channel output from the block so was above the level of the expansion tank. I took it off and lowered it so it was the same path as the golf and bled what air there was in the top of the rad by taking the overflow pipe off until water flowed out. It now seems a pretty good flow. Hopefully that's sorted it!

[Dizzie]

mine's always just dribbled out into the header tank

[frankerooney]

I'm guessing in theory that there shouldn't be all that much flowing until the thermostat opens - it shouldn't just circulate around the internals until it's hot enough. I guess some of the water gets pushed up the top rad pipe and that's why you see some coming out of the overflow pipe. I wouldn't say there's much of a flow dizzie - just a trickle at idle, but at the start of the post there was nothing!