Drove down to my parents on friday night, which is an hour and a half journey. Pretty warm weather. It was a relatively relaxed drive, with only a few spirited overtaking moments, so the ol\' FD wasn\'t pushed too hard.
I went to start it on Saturday morning and the coolant buzzer went off, panicked, turned the car off before it had warmed up and then realised she probably won\'t re-start. Well, one good surprise was that it did re-start without flooding! :D The buzzer goes off again, so i drive the 200 metres back to my parents but just as i got there the buzzer goes off. Keep her running but fill up a contained with water as a pre-caution.
I then go out with the car in quite hot heat, get stuck in a lot of traffic and the buzzer does not go off again. Come home, switch off. Next day i check the water level, and yes, it\'s a bit low. Fill it up a bit (About 3/4 mug full of water). In the evening I start it up to go back home on the 1.5 hour journey, and no buzzer, but the water temp goes up to operating level very quickly. No buzzer this morning, and water level fine.
Sorry for the long post, but is this the first signs of water seal failure? There was no more smoke coming from the exhaust than normal - just a quick puff when first started. What are peoples thoughts?
Difficult to tell matey, i would suggest you keep checking it before and after you drive (obviously waiting till its cooled down!!) for the next few runs and see if it continues to loose coolant. Might of just been a blip...
give me a call if you want me to take a look mate, im only down the road from you 07709136667
dave
Well, that\'s the thing: I don\'t know if there\'s an issue or not! Other than the buzzer going off sat morning and the coolant coming up to temperature very quickly yesterday evening, all seems well. I suppose it\'s possible that there\'s a leak somewhere, or the AST has split - but i can\'t see any splits in it: would the split be obvious?
some are obvious some may not be, its worth giveing everything a good spanner check and once over, top the water up from the centre filling point, not the expansion bottle behind the drivers head light.
i have a spare ast tank if needed and also had a coolant loss and buzzer warning on my fd a while back which i traced to water seals. feel free to call if you want a chat, im happy to take a look and help mate.
Ok, sounds good mate! How about sometime this week? Or failing that, sometime this weekend?
Could be a blip, mine has done this but the buzzer went off several times, I\'m in the process of replacing all the vacuum lines and coolant lines just to be safe :)
im free thursday night, friday pm and evening and all day saturday, take your pick.
I\'ll get back to ya, just so i know when I\'m allowed to come out and play!