Coolant loss

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tron

Active Member
Joined
Oct 24, 2006
Messages
705
Location
Bournemouth or France
Car
S203 220CDI.
En route to look at a Mercedes to buy but the 220CDI doesn't like the competition and wants to keep my wallet to itself. I got to Southampton and the low coolant warning came up. I checked. No lie, it is damn near empty and it wasn't last Monday when checked. Gentle run home and fill it up. No visible leak but no evidence of HG failure.
Set off again and five miles later same problem. Home and look for water. It wasn't immediately apparent. The forward hose to the EGR cooler had failed and it was a swine to remove. It won't be easy to replace, either but at least it will be a relatively cheap and painless fix. The other car will have to wait. I might need to take a day off next week. In the meantime, I'll call Sandown on Monday and order the part from the VIN.
 
I wouldn't bother with a head off job on a 180,000 mile diesel. Time's up; pull the Comand, Bluetooth puck and scrap it.
 
Work to value ratio. It will cost £300 in bolts, oil, gaskets head work and Swarfega plus a week of work and running around to get the head done. Call it twenty hours spent. Now you are at around 700. What's the car worth?
 
No, thank you.
Update. The pipe arrived at Sandown today and I took the 400/four in to work so I could collect it at lunchtime. The four is just getting used to being run after a big strip and rebuild this spring and howls nicely when opened up. I decided to fit the pipe using Jubilee clips instead of the spring clips for which I had no tool access but getting the bottom end of it on took about 40 minutes, an hour with tightening the clip! The rest went fairly well. The newly cleaned inlet body looked a lot better than what came off and once the thermostat had opened and the system had been purged, I took it for a swift run and all is now well.
I decided not to buy the other car so have resolved to tidy up the estate. A set of wood trim has been ordered and another centre console to replace the chewed up one currently fitted. One wing is ripply and I think a replacement will be a better thing than a PDR. Two wheels need to be refinished as well and that should be about it for the time being, together with a transmission service.
 

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