brown gunky 'rustiness' in the coolant top up bottle

[Ian Hulley]

Wait for other possibly more informed advice BUT a constant stream of bubbles is coming/going somewhere.

What age is the van ? What condition is the body ? (this is the most important factor) A new, recon Elite VW engine is £1,000 fitted. Take everything else into consideration and add that £1,000 (less what ever you can knock off the price). Now .... the choice is yours

Good luck, Ian.

[chuckle-bus-tom]

If your sure the rest of the van is solid you could have a good bargain on a shell for a new engine (approx. £800-£1300 http://www.elitevw.com/products.htm). That said, you could just have a duff waterpipe somewhere. Check deep into the van though: under front arches on top of fuel tank and rear arches by jacking points are usual suspect for rot.

Even real stinkers (like mine) are pretty good runners. I just kept my heaters lowing on full to stop from overheating. I drained, flushed (for about 35mins!) and refilled my system with 8.5L of G12+ last weekend and things are great.

I'd use the wiki hints on the bleed alongside Haynes and get a friend to help. I had a fountain of coolant coming out of the rad for about 5 mins before realising! At least £5 of coolant on the drive

[dugdog]

ok... so here's the (possibly good) news....

...yesterdays 'little bubbles coming into the top up tank' were checked out by looking through the number plate hatch - hadn't had the time to check under the hood... then had to rush off to play a gig last night, so didn't give it another thought....

...this morning (in the hope that all might be (miraculously) well)... thought I'd give it a good look after the half hour (there and back) school run, I popped the lid, and found that the dalek is sucking air! so - could be just that it is faulty, and all might be not as disasterous as I had wondered! (maybe need a sonic screwdriver )

or....wait til it cools and run a bit of ptfe tape around the thread, and see if I can get a seal... give it another good run and cross my fingers

[dugdog]

the dalek is sucking air!

... blowing... meant blowing (of course)...

[jaylo264]

sorry to say , that does sound like a head gasket problem to me .
jaylo

[dugdog]

...the thing is... (and reasons why I'll persevere with the dalek cap)

1. when i had it checked out by the mechanic, he said the head looked fine and the seals were good... also, i can hear the air hissing out of the dalek when the engine is warm...

2. when i first looked at the system - before realising the the dalek was blocked, the header tank was full to the brim and under pressure - clearly it had been running with the dalek blocked and was therefore under more pressure than it should have been - which is maybe not good for seals etc... but if the head was cracked or there was a leak - it wouldn't have built up that pressure, right?

thanks again for thoughts and advice.

Any other way i could check the system in order to diagnose if I'm right that it's just the leaking dalek cap?

the woman that owns it wants a decision this weekend may need to make my mind up before i have a chance to find out for sure!