Advice on Add Coolant/Tempature Rise Incident

[<--rYaN-->]

Today i was driving longer than i normally do, (1hr to 1hr and a half) and i was sitting at the lights around the corner from my destination when BEEEEEP, add coolant light comes on, to which i obviously panicked, no temperature rise, then less than a minute later after i fiddled with the heater controls the temperature rose to under the white bar (didnt go into red so hopefully may have got away lucky??) and then literally almost as soon as it had raised the temperature, the add coolant buzzer went off and the temperature dropped down to the normal centre level! I continued driving for 2 minutes after that and shut the car off when i got to my destination.

After being shaken when i arrived i opened the bonnet and couldnt see any leaks, (how quickly would coolant be used up, as i have only done about 3000 miles, if that, since my last service and to be honest i hadnt checked!) And the engine bay didnt "feel" hotter than it normally did etc, no massive plooms of steam etc lol.

I then took it out again no less than 10 minutes later (so if it didnt have a chance to cool down much), temperature rose slowly to normal level over a period of time, and stayed there for a 15 minute trip down the motorway and back, a nice steady happy temperature

So my question is was this just a slight glitch?? Bubble in the system which sorted itself??

I will check the coolant when i get my car back home on thursday but the fact this happened at all really has me shaken, i had it rebuilt by Pip around a year ago so im pretty sure the water seals etc will be in working order.

Thanks

Ryan

[Rich Cheung]

I check my coolant and oil levels every week without fail. TBH I\'d try and get into that habit, don\'t just leave it to the service intervals.

When I purchased my car the guy had it rebuilt by Pip about 9 months before. He said he kept getting the coolant buzzer coming on intermittently. He said Pip told him not to worry and just keep an eye on the levels and top up if necessary using just the main filler (middle one) and burping the system to release any air.

Since I had it serviced (coming up for 2.5k ago) I\'ve not had the buzzer come on and the coolant levels never move (now thats tempting fate).

Hope its nothing more serious than that.

Rich

[<--rYaN-->]

Cool, so i should top the centre cap on the engine up till it overflows??

I always thought i topped up the plastic radiator bottle. oops.

Cheers

Ryan

[Spotlamp]

There may be a couple of air pockets in the system, although it does seem unlikely.  You could try removing the filler cap (whilst the car is cold) and removing the cold warmup pipe which connects to the back of the intake plenum (opposite side of the plenum to the throttle linkage) and filling up the main filler (on the thermostat housing).  As this is the highest part of the water circuit it\'s the place most likely to capture air pockets.  Reconnect the cold warmup pipe thing at the back, but leave the main filler cap off.  Start the car up and see if any bubbles in the thermostat housing.  If there aren\'t any bubbles, put the cap back on and see how you go.  Obviously as the car warms up the water will expand so when you first start it don\'t leave the cap off for more than a minute or so or you\'ll end up with a big mess!

HTH
H