Broke again on Friday - leaving me stranded on the side of the M25. Hard shoulder diagnosis by both me and the recovery guy was a blown rad, so phoned ahead to my girlfriends parents (where we were headed) and got them to order a rad and fan switch from their local Euro Car Parts so I could fix it saturday. Pretty easy job - had the new one in within and hour or so. Bleed everything and let the car warm up but the fans wouldn't come on. So spent about half an hour going through the electrics and testing everything. After cleaning up a dodgy connector we finally got the fans working, although at this point just testing by shorting the switch connector. So ran the car up to temp again and then noticed coolant dripping out, further investigation revealed a small split in the top hose. Bastard thing.
Hadn't noticed this before as it was covered up by all the air intake piping and various other gubbins. But it was squirting a small jet of coolant onto the rad, so in fact it was probably the pipe that had caused us to steam/overheat in the first place. Doh. Phoned around all the motor factors in the area but unsurprisingly no one had the hose. After taking it off you could see it was badly perished so it didn;t really wanna just patch it up with some repair tape. Luckily my girlfriends parents have a Xantia TD they're not using at the moment, so a look under their revealed it had the same thermostat housing, but the top hose went in a different direction. But after 10 mins the hose was out and hacksawed in 2 and forced to fit the
205 :) So the 205 was filled back up with coolant, run up to temp and the fans came on. Thank god!Today we drove it the 140 miles home in 30 degrees with it fully loaded and we made it back with no dramas! Well not for me anyway - as I came down the M3 I saw one car upside down in a hedge and another facing the wrong way on the other carriageway and just being recovered. Oh and I nearly killed a stupid motorcyclist. And saw plenty of other stupid ones too - why do they think doing 90mph along a motorway in tracksuit bottoms/t shirt is a good idea? Nuts!
So not exactly the relaxing weekend I had planned! But the rad was looking a bit old anyway, so at least it's changed now, and I know the fans work for the hot spell we seem to be having at the mo.
Now it's time for beer!