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Oh B***ocks


carlo

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Help.Mrs Carlo decided to drive her 306 diesel turbo home 8 miles today after it seems all the water drained away. She said she heard a loud scraping noise, stopped and noticed water was pouring out of the front. Continued to drive it home even with the temperature gauge rising, stopping for a few minutes then carrying on. Apparently the last mile the noise got worse and there was a whiff of smoke. I doubt if it was steam as there was probably no water left by then. (if I knew how to use emoticons I'd insert about four here).Well, from what I can tell in the dark it's certainly got no water in, and makes a rather nasty rattling noise when I quickly started it.Any one help me with any tips about what tests I could do on it, how to fill with water etc, to try and avoid doing even more damage. I presume the car is knackered!

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Aah :cry: This happened to my wifes car(R Reg 306 TD), she had a small leak on the rad and continued to drive it. We did not have the grinding noises but the car eventually ran out of coolant then tried to cool itself with oil :twisted: A £500 bill followed for a new headgasket. Hope it's not as bad but sounds it though :cry:

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Is it a 1905cc Carlo? If so, when you fill it up with water again, make sure you bleed it correctly - the XUD is a right pain for air locks. Basically, make sure heater controls are set to "hot" before you start; make a funnel out of an old pop/water bottle; open and close the bleed valves in the sequence noted in the Haynes joke book - which I believe is (depending on where you have 'em) in the heater pipe; in the thermostat to rad pipe; at the nearside end of the rad.The TD is pretty notorious for eating headgaskets anyway (if the coolant isn't changed enough) so the prognosis ain't great I'm afraid. Mind you if it starts easily enough, it obv. has compression...

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It's a 1998 1.9 diesel turbo ric.Just tried putting water in and it's coming straight out again after about 5-10 seconds, not at the front but further back at the left side of the engine, can't see exactly where the exit is. I'm thinking maybe the water pump's broken or something. A mate of mine's coming round later and we're going to jack it up.God knows how she got it back obviously dry of water!!

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Shame your so far away I recently took ownership of a 306 Diesel that I was looking to put back on the road but as the list of jobs got longer the enthusiasm went so I dumped it round my dads. Is a 1.9 but not sure its turboed though. PM me if distance dosen't put you off I'm by Heathrow.On the subject of 'cooking' motors a while back when I used to get my hands dirty, I used to work on Airport crash tenders. Fire Service used to go off Airport doing Topology (learning the local area not shaping bushes), in case one went down off airport. On the M25 they had a bottom hose go on a Gloster-Saro Meteor (V8 Detroit Super and turbo charged), stopped evaluated the situation and decided the 8 mile rum back to MT in high summer should not be a problem. Not sure what the final cost was but it got hot enough to require a new engine, power-divider ever rubber component with in a foot of the engine some wiring.I am fairly certain that this is the one that is now at Brooklands (if the Reg number starts E95), would love to be there when they start it up as we fitted marina applications racing injectors to it and due to this it had a serious black smoke thing going on on start up and under load but went well.

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Why do people insist on continuing to drive cars which are obviously undrivable? :shock: Just turning up the radio to drown out the noise and keeping going isn't really the answer!!! A person I know (no names to protect the ...er ... guilty!) just ignored horrid grinding noises from the back of the car 'til it reached the point where it wouldn't go in a straight line. Investigation revealed colapsed wheel bearing.

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Guest greenvanman

I went to Uni with a girl who put a sticking plaster on the instrument panel of her Avenger because a red light (yes, that one) was on and it irritated her in the dark... yeah, people really *do* do this stuff :)

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I've recently purchased a low mileage Punto convertible ( as my wife's cheap commuter) with a blown engine. Seems the female owner had never checked anything, never serviced it in 30,000 miles -and when it finally went wrong didnt have a clue how to open the bonnet. ''Never looked under there''.When asked if it had got hot -she replied 'how would I know that? Temp guage- I never knew it had one. What does it do?'I've not bothered to strip it -just hunting for a cheap, known good 1250 16v replacement...

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Yes, unfortunately we live in times where people do not know even the basic maintanence of cars, they think that just because they are new, they are built to go on forever and will never break down, you wont beleive the number of people I have met like this, they just cannot get into thier head that some cars will eventually have problems when the parts wear down.

 

Increasingly, I've noticed that even some men are becoming like that. People expect their cars to go and stop, and not bother checking thier engines, or even servicing because they think that if it goes and stops then its ok :?

 

Carlo - When you get to see the car in good light again, check that none of the other hoses that goes into the radiator have come off, then fill it up with warter and run the car for a few mintues, if it comes out switch the car off and try and find out where its coming from.

 

Fill it up with radiator seal (I used Re-vite radiator seal) check that there is no mayo coloured stuff under the oil cap and run it around the block if its running Ok.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Lord Sterling

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Cheers for all the advise chaps.Mechanic who looked at it tonight seemed to think it was the water pump which had probably blown a seal or something, the leak's certainly from that area, and all hoses look OK. Mind you, it was dark and he was in a foul mood. Makes me quite glad I work in the warm fixing computers.I think the upshot of all this though is that I'm going to have to spend more on the car than I want to anyway. She'll have to drive my spare 405 automatic now - nice strong car unlike the 306 which has had £100s spent on it.

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Yes, unfortunately we live in times where people do not know even the basic maintanence of cars, they think that just because they are new, they are built to go on forever and will never break down, you wont beleive the number of people I have met like this, they just cannot get into thier head that some cars will eventually have problems when the parts wear down.

I think the manufacturors are largely to blame for this. Modern cars simply are much more reliable than the stuff most of us drive, and offering 100,000 mile warranties doesn't encourage home maintenance. When I stated driving, 200 quid bought me a 10year old Cortina that was a hair's-breadth away from the scrap yard and which needed constant fiddling to keep it running. Nowadays, the equivalent sort of money can get a good, solid motor that will keep going without much attention at all. And, replacing guages that are self explanetory with a meaningless array of warning lights doesn't help! And it's not just cars- virtually all home appliances are non-servicable now, but I can remember my folks fiddling with washers, fridges, and even tellys when I was a kid. They all even come with non-removable plugs today, coz we can't be trusted to change a plug without electrocuting ourselves! :roll: The day's fast approaching when we will have to call out an electrician to change a bloody light bulb. :evil:
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If your mechanic is cheap enough labourwise, it might be worth sourcing an OEM waterpump (Motaquip) from eBay for a tenner and a new cambelt (I paid a fiver for my last one, a Contitech) and boshing it on. You *may* just get away with this one, with an oil change - the oil will have got plenty hot and that might explain your rattling, esp. if the level is down.Otherwise I'd break it for parts - GLX is quite a high spec IIRC (my dad had one when they were new, 10 years ago) and I'm sure there are plenty of salvageable bits on it.XUD Turbo lump is generally very hardy, provided it's maintained correctly...Oh, and on the subject (very much OT) of modern electronics being "sealed for life", my wife's new laptop has just broken down for the second time in the 2 months since I bought it. This from the manufacturer who "invented" laptops too. Not happy. Give me an XUD every time, at least hitting it with a hammer sometimes achieves something!

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Without wishing to get all sexist on you, it does seem to be women who are more likely to do this kind of thing. I girl I knew once got a bit of a rattle from the engine of her beetle.... so kept driving. The rattle then became a louder drone, gained a bit of a grinding noise, before clouds of white smoke finally forced her to stop. It seems the rattle was the oil filler cap had come loose, and was bouncing off anything that moved and pinging against the decklid. Meanwhile, oil was being thrown out of the top of the open filler, until the lack of oil left in the engine trashed #3 cylinder and put a big hole in the barrel. A classic case of 'should have checked it out earlier' :(

Oh, and on the subject (very much OT) of modern electronics being "sealed for life", my wife's new laptop has just broken down for the second time in the 2 months since I bought it. This from the manufacturer who "invented" laptops too.

The inventor of laptops in my eyes (being the eyes I use to fix laptops for 8 hours a day...) is Toshiba, yeah? They're slowly turning rubbish. More and more of their stuff is built by 3rd parties, and has a Toshiba logo stuck on it. Quite a few 'recalls' creeping in now too. The best ones have a 15 volt power supply, they're 'real' Toshibas. The 19 volt stuff is cheap crap.
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Yes it is. I suspect it has overheated, thermally tripped and shut down - so kind-of related to the original topic! Whether it can be resurrected without replacement of more hardware (already had a new motherboard in the first 2 weeks) is anyone's guess...it gets collected on Monday. Plenty of instances on the relevant forums, apparently the internals get clogged with dust. Just sprung for a 2 year warranty extension on it, funnily enough...

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My dad once borrowed mum,s NEW corolla for a long trip. He only noticed something wrong when the motor seized. Turned out to be a stone through the radiator, and I remember he was successful with an insurance claim to fix it.

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My dad once borrowed mum,s NEW corolla for a long trip. He only noticed something wrong when the motor seized.

As I said before, I find more and more men these days are starting to get like that, especially those "new men" types who seem to be more intersted in moisturising, keeping up with the latest styles, looking like David Beckham and watching reality shows.

 

Lord Sterling

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