kinked rad hose

[SimonJ]

would a badly kinked bottom rad hose cause my water light to come on? The car doesn't overheat, the headgasket has been done about 3k ago by a previous owner at a so called vw specialist, the temp gauge sits in the middle, bu if u let the car warm up to say oil temp 90c, the coolant warning light will flash randomly for about 2 secs, then go. It does this regularly.
I flushed the cooling system and noticed that some hoses were crappy universal hoses cut to length. The top rad hose is ok as relatively straight, but the bottom one should have an elbow, which i remember on previous golfs i had. on this one it is just a straight hose bent more than 90 degrees, would this cause a pressure build up say when the thermostat opens? or am i talking a load of rubbish? please help!
Btw it's a 91 16v

[Mr Blue]

isnt that the coolant level light just flashing?
the running temps seem fine to me

[SimonJ]

the level is fine

[rubjonny]

I think Blue meant be the sender might be buggered, to check unplug it and bridge the pins.  If it still does it its either the clocks or wiring to the sender.

The temp warning will only flash if the engine is overheating, but it seems fine as in the middle of the gauge is normal running temp, and anything up to 3/4 is perfectly fine.  It can creep a little over 3/4 on a hot day in traffic, but as long as the fan cuts in you're OK.

[Judderi]

i thought the light flashed due to pressure drops. If thats the case then yes id suspect that dodgy hose. another thing to check is the filler cap as the seal fails and lets air in/out.

[rubjonny]

No I don't think so, the only sensors in the coolant system are temp and level.  Of course if the pressure got too high then this might force the level down a bit too much giving you the level warning

[Judderi]

I get the light now and again but it goes straing off again. Im planning on flushing the whole system and cleaning the header bottle with bleach. Hopefully this will solve the problem.

[SimonJ]

cheers for all help guys ive ordered hose from ecp anyway and going to do thermostat at same time, this may sort it then again it could just b an annoying dash fault. A number of people i know get this light going off randomly on their mk2s

[illumin]

I would definitely get the kinked hose sorted out to prevent head gasket problems. I had a similar thing on my last car - although the car wasn't overheating according to the gauges, but when running the hoses were red hot. Then oil started to creep into the coolant - so I got rid of the car before it got any worse!

Somebody did tell me that if the coolant is not flowing as it should, pressure builds up/the car overheats and will eventually cause a head gasket failure. Probably for the best that you are getting a new hose............

[SimonJ]

well...i changed the hose, cleaned out expansion tank, changed expansion cap for a vag blue one, and the light still randomly flashes. I ran the car and left it idle from cold, the fan kicked in at oil temp 98c, i left the engine running for a while longer, and the temp gauge only moved up a tiny bit above the middle. When i stopped the engine the oil temp was 112c, it didn't overheat so i dont get it