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The owners manual for my HDI 110 is rather vague about what is the right coolant level.

There is the metal cone thing that goes down a few inches, getting narrower as it does.

Where is MAX, OK and MIN ?

Erm... I think you need to replace your oil cooler and flush the cooling system out.

Holy sh*t, look at the state of the water, yes that level is about right but it badly needs a flush and treatment.

It should be fixable, I should know .........

Before:


After:

Thanks .

Rather than go the whole pulling things apart for a complete flush...
for now.. I spent the whole afternoon today using a siphon pump to remove
a much coolant from the reservoir as it could do, top up with about 3/4 litre,
run the engine for some minutes, remove some more, top up... repeat .

Coolant now looks a lot cleaner, but still pretty brown, so I'm going to have to
do a proper flush.

Backstory to this is...

Yesterday, I drove up to Bristol. I live out in the country these days.., and looks like I've gone a bit
'country' , because I completely forgot about early morning traffic jams.

Crawled through the outskirts of Bristol for almost 2 miles.
Suddenly the display flashed "STOP".. and "Engine Temperature..".
The Temperature Gauge seemed normal, but I turned off onto a residential side street right away,
drove up some other streets, and pulled in to stop. Looked in the bonnet. No apparent signs of
overheating.

I made to start up, dash lights came on, but no life from starter. I didn't have a clue where I was, so I walked
to the end of the street, and about a 100 yds away was a repair garage. Headed for that, and the boss said he could
have a look at my car in an hour.

I went back to the car, tried the starter. Nothing. Tried again, and it started. There had been a few occasions
like this in the last few weeks. Anyway, I kept the car running, and headed for home, pausing only to give my
regards to the garage man.

When I got home, I replaced the battery with a good almost new Yuasa that I had spare. I've started the engine
lots of times today, and no hiccups.

Will do a proper flush soon.

Could you elaborate on the oil cooler thing..Bailes ?

that doest look like oil in the coolant or it would appear more creamy, looks like no or hardly any antifreeze has been used for a while and its corrosion from the inside of the engine block, radiator etc disconnect the bottom hose off the radiator allow all the old rusty coolant to drain and flush through ideally with a hose, put pipe back on and remove again flush it through as many times as you can, refill with 50% mix antifreeze and water bleed system ensure coolant is to correct level run up to operating temperature, not driving car but having it idling.Make sure the heaters get hot still checking coolant level and make sure coolant fans cut in.
monitor coolant level over the next few days.

Attached underneath the oil filter is a water to oil heat exchanger or oil cooler as it's sometimes referred too.
These fail and slowly fill the coolant up with oil. You need to replace this and then flush the whole system out as yours appears to be leaking.

I'd say your starter solenoid is probably sticky too. Strip it down or replace it.

Bailes1992 wrote: These fail and slowly fill the coolant up with oil. You need to replace this and then flush the whole system out as yours appears to be leaking.

I've not heard of these failing, it's not what you'd normally need to watch out for anyway. The simplest thing to do is flush out, replace coolant, and then monitor.

trufflehunt wrote:Thanks .

Rather than go the whole pulling things apart for a complete flush...
for now.. I spent the whole afternoon today using a siphon pump to remove
a much coolant from the reservoir as it could do, top up with about 3/4 litre,
run the engine for some minutes, remove some more, top up... repeat .

Coolant now looks a lot cleaner, but still pretty brown, so I'm going to have to
do a proper flush.

Backstory to this is...

Yesterday, I drove up to Bristol. I live out in the country these days.., and looks like I've gone a bit
'country' , because I completely forgot about early morning traffic jams.

Crawled through the outskirts of Bristol for almost 2 miles.
Suddenly the display flashed "STOP".. and "Engine Temperature..".
The Temperature Gauge seemed normal, but I turned off onto a residential side street right away,
drove up some other streets, and pulled in to stop. Looked in the bonnet. No apparent signs of
overheating.

I made to start up, dash lights came on, but no life from starter. I didn't have a clue where I was, so I walked
to the end of the street, and about a 100 yds away was a repair garage. Headed for that, and the boss said he could
have a look at my car in an hour.

I went back to the car, tried the starter. Nothing. Tried again, and it started. There had been a few occasions
like this in the last few weeks. ........

Further to the above, after flushing through as much as I could....., the reluctance to turn over thing re-appeared.
So I did a voltage check on both batteries that I have. The almost new one showed 12.8V, and the other 12.6V .
Those seemed OK, so I decided to address the starter. I bought a secondhand one on ebey.

However, while I waited for it to arrive, I noticed a scuffing/scraping sound from the engine bay. From the alternator/belts/pulley
area. And when I checked underneath the bonnet, I could see the tensioner pulley(?) jerking back and forward also.

Also, in the last several starts.., the display has shown "Battery Charge Fault", which comes on and then goes off.
No fault codes in the computer.

I did think, at the beginning of all this..., the engine overtemp in heavy, almost stationery traffic, that as well as fresh coolant,
perhaps the root of the problem was the water pump. However, there seems to be an accumulation of things..., that I'm now rather lost.
I did wonder if the 'battery charge fault' display is caused by the erratic input the battery must be receiving when the belt/tensioner
is jerking around. ?

Any advice on first/next step please?

I would say the jerking of the aux belt and the battery fault message would be the clutch pulley on the alternator starting to throw in the towel which would also account for the strange noise from that area.