Re: Today I mostly .....
Posted: Tue Feb 25, 2020 10:49 pm
As noted a few posts back a few of the coolant lines on the Jag are showing signs of failure. The left hand top radiator hose in particular was ballooning quite alarmingly. While this is probably at least in part just due to old age, it felt like the system was maybe pressurising more than it should. I'd also spotted a couple of drips from the outer seal on the expansion cap.
I had a sneaking feeling that these would prove to be connected. This is because the expansion setup on the Jag is a bit strange (no surprise there...the whole coolant system is a bit strange), with the overflow tank buried inside the nearside front wing. It's totally inaccessible without removing the wheel arch liner...and you could be forgiven for not even knowing it's there. Through this tank is the only route for pressure in the system to vent. Fine...except for the fact that the line between it and the cooling system is a thin rubber hose which is bent through a tight 90 degree bend right after it disappears from view from the engine bay. As such this hose is very prone to kinking. The bottle itself is also a cause of trouble as of course being totally hidden from view it never gets cleaned, even if the cooling system gets serviced regularly (let's ignore the fact that Jaguar *recommended* that two tins of Barr's stop leak be added after each coolant flush for now!). So it tends to end up full of horrible organic slime.
Each enough to check though, just disconnect the hose from the header tank overflow line and see if you can blow through it. It should be easy to do, accompanied by a gurgling noise from the dip tube in the hidden tank. There shouldn't be any real resistance.
Oh.
We had double that on there and still zero airflow.
Well that won't have been helping anything then!
Play was stopped at this point by marble sized hail. However I've cobbled together a temporary solution to allow me to drive the car locally for the next few days while minimising the risk of blowing coolant hoses.
Have also wrapped some cable ties around the hoses which are bulging to hopefully help keep them together until the replacements arrive (a full set has been ordered). It's a horrible bodge...but sometimes that's unavoidable!
Any guesses on how many inches of solid mud I find in the bottom of the expansion tank when I get to it?
I had a sneaking feeling that these would prove to be connected. This is because the expansion setup on the Jag is a bit strange (no surprise there...the whole coolant system is a bit strange), with the overflow tank buried inside the nearside front wing. It's totally inaccessible without removing the wheel arch liner...and you could be forgiven for not even knowing it's there. Through this tank is the only route for pressure in the system to vent. Fine...except for the fact that the line between it and the cooling system is a thin rubber hose which is bent through a tight 90 degree bend right after it disappears from view from the engine bay. As such this hose is very prone to kinking. The bottle itself is also a cause of trouble as of course being totally hidden from view it never gets cleaned, even if the cooling system gets serviced regularly (let's ignore the fact that Jaguar *recommended* that two tins of Barr's stop leak be added after each coolant flush for now!). So it tends to end up full of horrible organic slime.
Each enough to check though, just disconnect the hose from the header tank overflow line and see if you can blow through it. It should be easy to do, accompanied by a gurgling noise from the dip tube in the hidden tank. There shouldn't be any real resistance.
Oh.
We had double that on there and still zero airflow.
Well that won't have been helping anything then!
Play was stopped at this point by marble sized hail. However I've cobbled together a temporary solution to allow me to drive the car locally for the next few days while minimising the risk of blowing coolant hoses.
Have also wrapped some cable ties around the hoses which are bulging to hopefully help keep them together until the replacements arrive (a full set has been ordered). It's a horrible bodge...but sometimes that's unavoidable!
Any guesses on how many inches of solid mud I find in the bottom of the expansion tank when I get to it?