Disco cooling system

I've got a P plate 300 tdi Disco and whilst driving home from my parents house yesterday I got to about a mile from home and noticed there was smoke/steam coming out from under the bonnet - only a tiny little bit, hardly noticeble (not clouds of it) and at first I thought it was the exhaust from the car in front.

Anyway, when I got home, I opened the bonnet to have a look and noticed that there was a water sprayed out from a leak in the cooling system. On closer examination, the top of the filler cap on the top of the thermostat housing in the middle of the engine had split and it looked like water was leaking from there.

Waiting for everything to cool down so I could take a more detailed look, the filler cap on the thermostat was knackered, so I just bought a new one and after a bit of drilling and careful use of pliers, managed to remove the old one (which had sheared off at the top of the thread, leaving the thread in the thermostat housing and the top of it in my hand!).

I opened the water expansion tank and noticed it was pretty much empty, so I've topped everything up.

It's only been serviced about 10 days ago, so I presume the filler cap has only just gone, or they'd have probably spotted it in the garage, and the temperature gauge on the dashboard has been reading normal temperature - otherwise I'd have stopped sooner and checked things.

What I want to know is is anything likely to have been damaged and is there anything else I should check.

Paul

Reply to
Paul Vigay
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Those plastic caps are notoriously unreliable any have cost a new head on many a 300Tdi. Have a look at the following link for a better alternative

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Colin
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Reply to
Colin Reed

A most excellent and discerning choice ... ;)

If you only ran it for a few minutes and the temop gauge wasn't dancing the fandango then it's probably OK. There have been cases, as pointed out by CR, where heads have warped etc, but I'd guess this is more because of running for too long at too hot a temperature rather than simply because the cap went.

As CP also said, there are alternative plugs available that should be more reliable.

Reply to
Paul - xxx (mobile)

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