Club 80-90 Forums

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.

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

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 wrote: the dalek is sucking air!

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

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

...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!