Hi All,
I was hoping ye could help out with a mate's 306 that has just started overheating after sitting for 2 weeks.
Car is a 1993 1.4 Petol with 15k miles.
Symptoms are that it starts to over heat after driving a few miles. Heater is blowing cold all the time. The coolant level has dropped to half way. There's no water in the oil and no oil in the water. No steam or smoke from the exhaust.
When idling with the cap off the expansion tank on the side of the radiator, the level slowly rises over a few minites and seems to rise more rapidly when revved. There are no bubbles in the coolant when running, in fact no circulation or pressure at all.
With the oil filler cap off, there's some pressure, but this might be from the valve gear? I'm not sure what's normal here.
After idlying a few minutes, the temp gauge rises but the radiator remains cold, as are the pipes to the rad and the pipes to the heater matrix.
After switching off, the coolant level slowly drops again.
So What is it? Doesn't appear to be the head gasket. A stuck thermostat would still heat the heater matrix wouldn't it? Could it be a dead water pump? How come the water level is going up and down?
Last work done on the car was timing belt along with filters and oil 7 months ago.
Cheers in advance, Gromit