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Coolant problems

This may seem a very silly question but I'm going to ask it anyway :o)

Over the years I've owned many cars but I've never come across anything like this before, but then again, I've never owned a French car before - so my 'very silly question' is:

Does this coolant look "normal" for an R-reg (1997) Citroen Saxo 1.1 (petrol), or is it, as I suspect, indicative of some bad problem?

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Just bought the car from a friend and neighbour of mine last week for a few hundred quid as a little runabout. He said that he's never had any problems with it and even said that if anything went wrong in the next 3 months, he'd pay for the repair (not seen him about this yet BTW, just thought I'd ask here first).

There *is* a problem in that a hose has developed a slight leak and that's why I have a puddle of coolant on my drive to begin with, but looking at that coolant makes me think it's not just a hose that I need to worry about.

Cheers,

Pete

Reply to
Pete Zahut
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TBH, it looks more like a Radweld type stuff which would tie in with the leak you mentioned.

Fix the leak, flush out the cooling system and put a fresh antifreeze mix in. See how it is then. It's not a grey/brown sludge so it's not headgasket. Take it out for a run - chances are it's spent its life doing short journeys.

Reply to
Conor

Cheers Conor, good idea.

Pete

Reply to
Pete Zahut

That's Radweld, flush it out, buy a new hose & relax :-)

Reply to
Duncan Wood

Thanks Duncan, feeling better already :o)

Reply to
Pete Zahut

The next thing to go will be the heater matrix. I have seen it so many times when people try to sell a car with a radiator leak, water pump leak or if old enough, broken core plug! They tip radweld in. All that does is disrupt all the corrosion from inside the engine. That is what those bits are. Flush it and fix it before all those bits form in to a hard lump in the heater matrix. Your neighbour has lied to you, what a decent friend.

Reply to
Clive

In message , Clive writes

I can go back several decades to my Radflush/Radweld days. :-(

Then I found a little back street radiator specialist who took the radiator off and repaired it while I had a wander round some shops.

Reply to
Gordon H

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