'97 Volkswagen Golf Problem

Hi All,

A friend dropped up last night in his newly acquired '97 Golf 1.4 - the interior heater's not working and it occasionally overheats...

So first of all I had a look at the water level - make sure he had some coolant in it - all was well there...

Next I thought it might be an airlock - so I ran it for a while with the cap off the expansion tank and massaged the hoses, the hose going into the heater matrix was very hot - the one coming out not so hot - but there wasn't a trace of warm air in the cabin...

The radiator was warm so I reckoned the thermostat was ok and hadn't failed shut, and the fan was cycling on and off...

Then something peculiar happened - when running with the cap off it would occasionally belch quite a bit of coolant out through the expansion tank - it would just surge up - and the temp gauge was showing around 90C at this time.. (the coolant was clean and not discoloured) - could the head gasket be gone in such a way as to fill the system with a burst of air now and then? (this happened maybe four times in 5-6minutes)

Is there anything else it could be? - the heater matrix is unlikely to be clogged it's a relatively new car and the coolant has been changed at some point... internally maybe it's the baffle or whatever it is that diverts the air over the heater matrix that has become disconnected from the control, but as to whats causing it so spit out fluid, I don't know?

In terms of water pump failures - don't they usually just start to leak, or just seize, it's unlikely to have stopped pumping leading to localised boiling or is it?

Any advice/theories appreciated,

Karl.

Reply to
Karl
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Why am I not surprised that this is your first post ever on UseNet...

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snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search Very entertaining. I would be using a different ID too if I wrote all of that.

Did you try the Vortex for info yet?

:)

Karl wrote:

Reply to
Peter Parker

this is what has happened to me when air was present in the coolant system.....

Reply to
Eduardo Kaftanski

This happens to "ALL" closed VW systems when you run it from cold to hot with the expansion tank cap off. This happens when the thermostat burps and the rest is a "no brainer". It has nothing to do with air. The closed system needs to be closed and let the expansion tank overfill weep hole take care of the bleeding out of any air....

Reply to
Peter Parker

Good to know, thanks :)

Reply to
Eduardo Kaftanski

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