Hot engine but cold radiator

[Hoopy_Frood]

I'm trying to bleed my cooling system after putting a new radiator in, but the blooming thing won't heat up, even after fast idling for 10 minutes. I get some bubbles coming out the bleed screw, but after that's it is just cold coolant. The engine temp reads hot, 2/3 of the way up the temp gauge. Could my thermostat be the problem? The water pipe coming out of the bottom of the thermostat housing doesn't seem to be filling with water, whereas the pipe at the top is full of hot water. If the thermostat was stuck in the closed position, is that what I would expect? It's an early DG engine, so getting at the thermostat looks really tricky.

Any help would be great.

Thanks

Iain

[pionte]

it does sound like your thermostat is stuck closed... and you are right, getting it out is a real pain in the ar$e. If you have to go down that route then spray the nuts and bolts holding the housing to the water pump liberally with decent penetrating fluid. They have a nasty habit of seizing necessitating in some heavy handed methods to separate them, this can wreck the thermostat housing... and these are rarer than hens teeth.I wish you luck !

[Plasticman]

if we assume it worked prior then i wonder,,, is the rad connected the right way round ... and have you bled it correctly
mm

[pionte]

did you sort this out ? It would be great to know the result as it may help others out in the future .

[Hoopy_Frood]

I put a new thermostat in and tried to bleed the system again. The radiator was getting warm (yaaay) but then I noticed I was running really really low on petrol and got ready to go the garage. Then, my clutch pipe broke before I set off and I lost all the hydraulic fluid. I've spliced in some new pipe after dropping the radiator again and now need to bleed the clutch and finish bleeding the cooling system. The pipe was old and the radiator mounting bracket ended up rupturing it (perhaps I was a bit heavy handed). I've routed the new pipe away from the bracket so it hopefully won't happen again.