Loss of Radiator coolant resolved
Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2016 4:43 pm
OK so this is the outcome.....Further to my earlier post re "Radiator antifreeze verloor
The one positive thing about the whole affair is that I now have some 20 kg of scrap aluminium to sell to a scrap metal dealer. Yes that is the weight of a 3.2 cylinder head.
Everything now falls into place and makes perfect sense. That is: If you loose coolant and there are no obvious leaks, the stuff is flying through the exhaust. In my case a TINY horizontal crack of about 3 mm long developed inside the injector porthole below the o-ring and above the tapered narrowing of the port at the bottom towards the combustion chamber. I. Suspect the water chamber comes too close to this port and under certain conditions it may collapse. Slvertons tests could not pick this up.
Apparently this problem is not an uncommon one on these cars. If you suspect a similar issue you may be able to confirm this by pulling the injectors one at a time and look for white coolant deposits. In my case the corresponding glow plug also had the white coolant deposit. Fortunately my regular monitoring of the heat gauge prevented bottom end damage due to overheating so the bill was only R30.3K.
The one positive thing about the whole affair is that I now have some 20 kg of scrap aluminium to sell to a scrap metal dealer. Yes that is the weight of a 3.2 cylinder head.
Everything now falls into place and makes perfect sense. That is: If you loose coolant and there are no obvious leaks, the stuff is flying through the exhaust. In my case a TINY horizontal crack of about 3 mm long developed inside the injector porthole below the o-ring and above the tapered narrowing of the port at the bottom towards the combustion chamber. I. Suspect the water chamber comes too close to this port and under certain conditions it may collapse. Slvertons tests could not pick this up.
Apparently this problem is not an uncommon one on these cars. If you suspect a similar issue you may be able to confirm this by pulling the injectors one at a time and look for white coolant deposits. In my case the corresponding glow plug also had the white coolant deposit. Fortunately my regular monitoring of the heat gauge prevented bottom end damage due to overheating so the bill was only R30.3K.