Is it a kettle? No it\'s my water seals :(

[RobbieRX-7]

It\'s looking pretty good so far then. You should get a hydrocarbons tester from your local motor factors whilst the\'re still open. Most close at 5 on a sat. They only cost about a tenner and it will kill some of the anxiety before the pressure test on thursday.

[RemarkLima]

Do Halfrauds sell them? Just been phoning around to see if anyone has any, but can\'t find anyone with any of them :/

Any ideas where to check?

[RobbieRX-7]

Sorry mate, can\'t help on that one. A good motor spares shop should have them

[RemarkLima]

Sadly not a single place round here had anything, they all knew what I meant (BTW, it\'s best referred to as a "block tester") but said it was supplied by tool merchants and the like... SO no joy there :/

I\'m going to go and change my plugs back to the 7\'s and 9\'s in a bit after giving them a scrub, so will turn the block over and see if any coolant comes out...

Thanks again all for the help so far!

[leon]

A daft question, have you tried toping the system up and just leaveing it to see if you can spot any leaks?
normaly from what i hear when you have a waterseal problem its a real bitch to start and it will toss\'s white smoke out of the back for obvious reason. I know i had a \'slow\' leak which was hard for me to track down, it was the gasket/weaphole on the waterpump.

The symptoms of mine were it would leak half a cup of water and that was IT, no over heating then one day it just give up the ghost and blew its load over the road.:Nono! (no sexual inuendo intended)

I realy think you need to give the basics a real good lookover before you go down the route of waterseal failure.

oh! Just an off the wall idea, If your filling it up and starting it instantly, in theory if its say a coolant pipe going to the turbo\'s thats leeking you probebly wont see any leak as it will burn off stright away.

[RemarkLima]

It\'s pretty much like that, can drive all day long without any overheating, had the plugs out yesterday and turned it over and just had some condensation come out (I watched the MotoGP and left the plugs out before trying!), but no coolant.

It starts fine with lean plugs, no problems at all! Run\'s fine, no more steam than the usual. So I\'m thinking maybe not water seals.

But can water leak into the turbo\'s? Or is it just oil that can get in there?

And then it\'s pretty consistant, about 400ml\'s of water I have to top up each time, and after a couple of times it\'ll blow some out of the expension tank, just because the system is overfilled... Kinda expected.

I think if we can pressurise the system then we\'ll be able to spot the leak hopfully! Or I can wait until it blow\'s it\'s load!!!

[leon]

Sounds like the waterpump or gasket then thats exactly what i had to do then it just progresivly got worse, but its odd your haveing problems actualy finding a leak! unless its just falling down and pooling in the tray. Btw blowing its load aint a good thing usualy happens at the most inoppertune times, i scared the crap out of a little old lady when i dove down a one way street the wrong way to get it off the mian rode, thankfuly killed the engine parked it up (yes engine off before i stoped moveing) filled her up two hours later and blitzed the last mile home. my car left a rather wet trickle all the way home

(as for checking the pump, Pull the IC pipes off and get your head down there, or a mirror? see if theres any gunk on the lower half of the waterpump, usualy a good sign of it failing.)

[RemarkLima]

Hmm sounds promising! In a bizarre kind of way

I\'ll have it up on ramps on Thursday so we\'ll be able to take a good look and hopefully find the source!

[leon]

well yeah! its better than a blown water seal, give it a real good pokearound.

[alexb]

I had a water leak from the sensor below the filler neck - can\'t remember if that\'s coolant level or temp though. Basically the plastic thread was cracked and once the system pressurised it was leaking and running down onto the hoses going to/from the rad (from where it evaporated I assume). It was a small enough leak not to produce a puddle but enough for the low coolant alarm to come on quite regularly. Bought a new sensor from my local Mazda dealers for £20, problem solved

Good luck with the diagnosis

Cheers,
Alex

[RemarkLima]

Thanks Alex, sounds like it could be a few things... I do hope it\'s a simple sensor swap out! That would be great

[leon]

yeash! that was a nightmare to diagnose! i know it was annoying tracking the waterpump leak down with everything on for me, i eventualy spotted water runing down a few wires to the drivers side of the car.

[alexb]

I ended up having to take the airbox off (to see everything properly) and running the engine from cold while watching everything like a hawk until spotting something suspicious!

[leon]

Yeah, i know what you mean, also worth cleaning things up as well when your down there as it would make spotting leaks easyer before you top it up, wish there was some trick you could do to make it easyer to spot such as adding a UV reactive dye to the water (not sure if that would screw things up, so wouldnt even consider it)

[RemarkLima]

Once again thank you all for your help and suggestions!

But I\'ve found the leak... External, which is nice, but I was 180 miles from home, which wasn\'t very nice

Basically the top plastic tank of the cr@ppy Mazda radiator had split, obviously just a tiny amount initially, and slowly getting worse, until I just thought sod it, we went to Bath for the Saturday and Sunday, get there fine, Sunday add loads of water (not a good sign!) and some more coolant and get going, about 10 minutes from Cheddar George there\'s loads of steam and the buzzer sounds before the temp starts to go up, so immediately off and wait 15 minutes before filling up and leaving a nice snail trail to Cheddar George...

...We had a nice day out, checking out the caves etc, thinking I was going to be towed hom by the AA... Call them, find I don\'t have relay cover so it would cost me in excess of £300 to get home... Bad, very bad! But with the AA guy, who was extremely help full, we find the leak spraying right out of a crack in the top tank at the back, so hidden by all the stuff above and was evaporating well before it was visible.

He had some putty to gam it up and a bit of K-Seal (good stuff, only blocks holes and doesn\'t screw up cooling systems, read up on it already) and managed to crawl home.

So time for a new rad! And pronto!

At least it\'s not the water seals Yet!!!