Magical HGF cure

[wuvvum]

Has anyone ever used a product called Seal-Up?  It's one of these "liquid glass" HGF cures - it's a proper one where you have to drain the cooling system, flush it, refill it with water, drain it again, refill it again, add the product, dance three times round the car anticlockwise whilst reciting Avesta backwards, run the engine for exactly 1427 seconds, drain it again etc. etc.  Only thing is it was just over 6 quid off eBay, whereas the equivalent K-Seal product is about 30 quid.  So I'm wondering whether it's going to be any good?

 

[vulgalour]

The way to look at all of these products is whether or not you care about the vehicle you're inflicting it on.  If you just want to eke out a few more miles of motoring until you can replace it then you've nothing to lose, sometimes they even work.  Can't say on this stuff because I've never used it but I can say I despise K-Seal and how impossible it is to get OUT of an engine when you've fixed the problem it was put in to solve but didn't.

[jon928se]

I used something similar about 13 years ago to temporarily (until I could find a replacement head and rebuild the engine) seal up a head that had cracked between the water jacket around pistons area and the cam housing above on my 928. Can't remember which brand it was now as too long ago but 13 years later and 45,000 miles of everything from commuting in London to 500 miles in 4 hours (incl. fuel stop) in Germany, the engine rebuild still awaits and still no oil in the coolant or vice versa. 

[sierraman]

Might work, might not. Either way I'd give it a go. If it's a simple head gasket swap like an A Series or whatever then I'd just replace the gasket. If it's something that's going to be a big pain in the arse and the cars a banger then I'd have no hesitation. I've used k seal before several times, worked just fine on weeping joints on housings, pumps etc.

[Timewaster]

As above, if you give two fucks about the car and it is a keeper then fix it properly. If it's a beer money shitter that you need to get another month or twos commute out of then give it a go.

[pshome]

This is how your cooling system will look like afterwards:

 

Took me a week to get that Tagora engine running properly, 6 days of it was flush it, refill it with water, drain it again, refill it again, add the product,  dish washer tablet, dance three times round the car anticlockwise whilst reciting Avesta backwards, run the engine for exactly 1427 seconds, drain it again etc. etc.

 

By the way, dish washer tabs do the job well, thanks fellow shiters for the tip!

[EssDeeWon]

I'm with Vulg on this one.

[sierraman]

It depends on your expectations. It's easy to say just replace the head gasket but even doing it yourself costs, the gasket, coolant, bolts oil etc. Not just that but once you start taking stuff apart you inevitably might find further problems. If the cars a banger I can't see a problem if it does the job. I'd use it again without hesitation on stuff like a weeping seal on a pump or a slightly leaking housing in a difficult spot. Probably wouldn't use it on something like a radiator as its just as easy to replace the offending part.

 

Wouldn't use Radweld though, simply because there's better options these days. Bars Leaks used to work well for me though. Can you still buy it?

[twosmoke300]

Haven't seen the tubes of dog turds for years

[fordperv]

About 10 months ago my mate chucked steel seal in his Vectra estate after me telling him about it, he was short of cash, 2 little mouths to feed and needed the car to get to work to earn money, it sorted it right out and is still going strong

[twosmoke300]

Didn't work on my van or dads Kia Sedona despite doing it by the instructions . We are actually going to claim our money back too . I bet no one bothers

[Inspector Morose]

Haven't seen the tubes of dog turds for years

Wasn't those Vauxhalls infamous "shit sticks"? Drop one in the radiator and no leaks, no heater, no cooling etc...

[dugong]

605 V6 runs some K Seal because the pipework is impossible to source, the cooling circuit had been bodged to fuck anyway before my time and the radiator developed a cracked shoulder joint which geysered coolant out all over the road when FPB7 went to check it. When I have all the parts I need, it'll be done properly, but judging by the horrendous shadtree idiocy that had been inflicted on the car to keep it running previously, half a bottle of K Seal was the least of its worries. 

I'm slowly building up the collection of parts I need to do it properly. Had the parts been available in the first place I wouldn't have bothered with K Seal; at the time I was running it as my everyday car because my C4 had exploded and I couldn't keep borrowing cars from work. 

[sierraman]

Exactly. It's served a purpose while you get the bits to repair it.

[RoadworkUK]

My A4 has had K-Seal, Radweld and all kinds of other miracle elixirs administered unto it over the years.

 

Like these astonishing pain relief products you hear about on TV that "Target shin pain" or whatever, whenever my car started to lose water I bunged in whichever of these leak-stop agents was on special offer at the time. It always worked perfectly.

 

Of course, last year everything went all wrong and I had symptoms which looked suspiciously like HGF, but after renewing THE ENTIRE cooling system everything was as good as new again.

 

Verdict On K-Seal etc:- *shrugs*.

[wuvvum]

It's the Rover VI I was thinking of using it on.  I'm not 100% sure if it's HGF or not (need to do a compression test really, but the tester I bought off eBay was a dud) but it's certainly losing water from somewhere.  Problem is that while I quite like the car, primarily due to its brilliance as a sleeper, if I take the head off I've really got to do the cambelt (probably both belts to be on the safe side), then whilst I'm doing that it'd make sense to do the water pump, plus all the associated gaskets, stretch bolts etc, and that's assuming the head doesn't need skimming.  Plus there's no guarantee whatsoever that I could do the belts on a VVC Kettle without fucking them up royally.

[Captain Furious]

I may have (I have) put some magical water leak repair potions in cars in the past and cured minor rad leaks and the like, not sure I'd put too much faith in them with HGF though. Not so much from a mechanical sympathy point of view, but I really hate being stuck on the side of roads waiting for the big yellow lorry.

[Partridge]

That surprises me. I thought bits for a PRV V6 would be pretty easy to find? To be honest I'm having similar trouble with the Rover.

605 V6 runs some K Seal because the pipework is impossible to source,

[dugong]

That surprises me. I thought bits for a PRV V6 would be pretty easy to find? To be honest I'm having similar trouble with the Rover.

Right. Except there are two types of radiators and mine has the 'other one' which has a gearbox cooler as well. The one no-one has in stock. The plastic shoulder is fused to the radiator and is impossible to repair unless you hack the shoulder off and fit a metal one (which I might have done).

 

Pipework is listed as available but it's OOS in Peugeot's system when you go to purchase it. ECP and GSF haven't got anything. NOS stuff from eBay is hit and miss.

Dean Hunter's prices are insane.

[dollywobbler]

Right. Except there are two types of radiators and mine has the 'other one' which has a gearbox cooler as well. The one no-one has in stock. The plastic shoulder is fused to the radiator and is impossible to repair unless you hack the shoulder off and fit a metal one (which I might have done).

 

Oh that sounds marvellously French. They really are the experts of just chucking on any old shit they can find to avoid a production backlog. Though I suspect they're more evil than that, and have a department specially dedicated to making things that look similar, but are actually different enough to not be interchangeable. 

[Partridge]

Right. Except there are two types of radiators and mine has the 'other one' which has a gearbox cooler as well. The one no-one has in stock. The plastic shoulder is fused to the radiator and is impossible to repair unless you hack the shoulder off and fit a metal one (which I might have done).

 

Pipework is listed as available but it's OOS in Peugeot's system when you go to purchase it. ECP and GSF haven't got anything. NOS stuff from eBay is hit and miss.

Dean Hunter's prices are insane.

And you're still talking to me?