Club 80-90 Forums

Each winter we have the disussion thread around " are there any additives to the coolant system that may help patch up ropey water jacket gaskets".

Holts Radweld, Subaru Cooling SYstem Conditioner, an egg....!!

Usually the answer is - no - drop the engine - do the heads properly (or pay someone £££s to do it) etc.

Some will go with an additive anyhows - and we will all guess whether they are still running a few months (years later).

Just to avoid this year's installment - the samba are running the thread for us at:
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewto ... 454e612f38

Some very respected waterboxer people seem to think some of it may give an extra bit of life....

the only stuff i would use on one of these systems is k-seal.

I k sealed mine 12 months ago and it's still ok, still has a slight weep from the stud nut but the jacket weep and the other small leaks on the system have held fine, I'm losing 100ml a month which is fine and it's a daily driver doing 10k+ miles a year
I k sealed because I didn't want to open up the can of worms that touching the head stud might entail cos it's clealy been worked on before, probably had a new jacket seal previously, and I haven't got time to loose the vehicle and be without one at the mo, hopefully by the time I need it the spare engine will be all sorted and ready to pop in; this is as far as I can tell 137k miles original engine, good compression and runs fine, was well maintained vw dealer history in germany
I will be doing a coolant change in the spring though and flush and replace, may have to k seal again then we'll see