My Chimaera looses coolant. I cant see any leaks, no water in oil, themostat opens, rad is recored. No noticable steam out of the exhaust.
Now I'm looking at removing the heads, but as a last resort as anyone who has taken off the exhaust manifolds knows what a pain in the ass this
is.
BTw temperature is ok until obviously coolant levels drop too far.
Any other thoughts?
First is to test the system with a low pressure pressure tester.
When hot and under pressure any leaks will flash off into steam, steam is invisible. By use air to pressurise the system to about 1 to 1.5 bar
above ambient pressure any leaks can be found more easily.
There is a fella on here with a V8 Viento (wilkinj) and his cooling system was losing water and he found it was blowing water off when the engine was
hot. He has a extra coolant bottle that the water blows off into. When the engine cools it sort of sucks it back up again.
He'll probably post on this thread and explain it better
You can get your system pressure tested and see if it leaks down. The other test is a chemical sniffer for exhaust gas in the coolant and/or
antifreeze in the oil/exhaust. Let's do the tests before we start stripping engines.
Years ago my Mum had a Skoda Estelle. It had a coolant leak, never found out where from. We used to carry a couple of litres of coolant around and top
it up weekly. There was am idea that the lengthy hoses were porous, these cars often had leaking coolanttrouble, and lots of them went to the breaker
because of HG failure.
ok now to find someone local to do the test that isnt going to cost the earth.
Dunno over the years I've seen heard of a multitude of coolant eating/ leaking issues with that horrid rover v8 abomination.
it's become a v boring story and imo anyone naive enough to own one is on their own.. 'nuff said.
Are you not having a problem similar to mine on the Cobra as per this thread?
http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/viewthread.php?tid=167200
Easy enough to make a pressure tester just Tee into hose at the top of the system.
On the Rover K & Ford Zetec I tee into a bleed hose with a connector bought from B&Q connected to a garden sprayer.
On other cars I just use Tee of the type used for LPG installs to tee into the heater hose circuit and a Schrader valve from a Rover KV6 fuel
system pressure test point as below.
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[Edited on 6/3/12 by britishtrident]
quote:
Originally posted by Bare
Dunno over the years I've seen heard of a multitude of coolant eating/ leaking issues with that horrid rover v8 abomination.
it's become a v boring story and imo anyone naive enough to own one is on their own.. 'nuff said.
While it is true coolant leaks are far from unknown on the Rover-Buick V8 mostly inlet manifold and head gasket related as a friend who did an
truly insterstellar mileage pulling a plant trailer with a very early Range Rover put it "I just do the head gaskets every 130,000
miles".
I am not a big fan of the Rover V8 as performance engine but it deserves respect.