Radiator volume?

I have had vehicles way older than 20 years old that never had any overheat problems due to scale. If you are running the proper anti-freeze mix that reduces the corrosion potential. I run distilled water in my cars as I have a well. The last place had a deep well and it had more than H2O in that water. A fair bit of dissolved minerals. There may be some slight chance that the head gasket is clogged. I never saw any sign of that on any engine I have taken apart but I have a limited sample set of 5 engines of my own and water cars I touched as a kid. In fact I never saw any engine including the ones that I know were neglected having any cooling issues.

Make sure you burp the cooling system. Do not drive it until you see the burps and you have added more water to the plastic expansion tank. Years ago my brother tipped a Chevy engine over after he had removed the freeze plugs. Sand came out of the freeze plugs. I never saw that happen on a VW engine as I believe their quality control is a bit better than GM.

If your car is running lean it will run hot. If you have significant exhaust restrictions it will run hot. I do not think those conditions will affect idle overheating though. I will tell you on my 84 the radiator fan would turn on and off a lot at idle once the car warmed up in the summer. I cannot recall what it would do in the winter as I sold that car about 4 years ago.

Keep us posted.

Hello Jim. Well Ok wouldent you know it. It's improved but it's still hotter than was for eighteen years of it's life. Now the gauge hovers between two thirds and half way up the scale. I've decided to remove the head anyway to have it skimmed as it's leaking oil and replacing the gasket has made no difference. So at the same time I'm going to replace the pump. This might take a while but I'll let you know the outcome. It might be new knowledge that can help everybody. I've never had anti freeze in the vehicle. Only ever plain water (that might be the problem eh?). We dont get the extremes of weather you get in the US. The vehicle has never frozen up and when it's freezing I generally leave it garaged.

Cheers Jim Roger

Jim Behn>I have had vehicles way older than 20 years old that never had any

It isn't just anti-freeze. it is also anti-boil. It offers corrosion resistance. Not running corrosion inhibitors in a water cooled engine is folly. If you do not want to run anti-freeze/ anti-boil you should either get a Type1, 2, 3 or 4 that is air cooled, and old Porsche that is air cooled, an old Deutz tractor. Kind of like a human not eating vegetables. You will have problems of some sort if all you eat are processed foods and fried foods.

Some of those oil leaks could be caused by lack of corrosi>Hello Jim. Well Ok wouldent you know it. It's improved but it's still hotter

As an aside, there is a product that makes coolant (and also plain water) more efficient at cooling, called 'WaterWetter' by Red Line Products.

I know folks who have turbo charged their vehicles and found it very helpful.

Stuart H. Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada Where it was -44C (47 below F) last Tuesday morning! I run real "anti-freeze" coolant!

2006 Jetta TDI

Thanks for the links Stuart and Jim.

Roger

Stuart H. wrote: