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I've always had a mild leak in the coolant system somewhere, but the past week or two it's been empty every few days. Can't see where it's leaking from although there's a river of coolant in the underneath tray. It's a pain when I come to a stop to be greeted with a cloud of steam!

I'm a bit hesitant to pour radweld into the system as I dunno if it'll clog up the pipework or heater matrix.

Radiators are going for £70 on ebay (£152 from the stealers!) but I can't really afford it for a while.


Suggestions? I really want to find out about the leak before doing anything drastic/expensive, but I guess the steam pouring from the entire radiator block would suggest drastic/expensive action needs to be taken? :/

i would use barsleaks as its cheaper and better than radweld, ive put too lots in my car for the same problem and has been good for over 6,000 miles

I'll do that sort of mileage in 2 months though... Given I hope I can get somewhere near another 100k miles out of it, I think I'll probably be best off with a new rad I reckon. It's just the splash tray (to drain), a couple of pipes and a few bolts to lift it out ain't it? Why can't I find my Haynes grrr

I'm losing about a pint or two of coolant per day now, so I've got to do something. Think I'm going to splash £60 on a new rad and quite possibly a new set of pipes while I'm at it. The pipes can't be that expensive or difficult to replace can they? Less than the cost of a return taxi to the stealers when I take the rad off and the old ones split in typical Murphy's Law fashion? ;)

Actually come to think of it it may be the pipes causing the leak, given how the rubber on my door frames takes in water and seals the damn doors shut when it's cold... Is there any way to diagnose exactly where the leak is without disconnecting or moving anything (in case it is the rubber that's about to give up the ghost!)? There's no pools under the car of a morning so I'm thinking it's possibly only a small leak, passing coolant when it's hot and pressurised, at which point there's coolant steam pouring off everywhere making it impossible to see exactly where it's coming from. Argh!

may even be the head gasket if your really unlucky, even if it hasnt overheated, its just one of the downsides of the turbo engine, the only way to tell where the leak is, is to get the cooling system pressure tested, but a testing kit is arround £150 so its obviously cheaper for a garage to do the test for you

Is the leak not obvious if you were to stand in front of car with bonnet open and let the car warm up in front of you whilst your watching for leaks, if your loosing that much out of any car it should become quite apperent and if it is on the rad as long as its the seams just solder it but is better if you can get a friendly plumber to do as they have all the gear anyways and should cost no more than a "drink" to solder but obviuosly if its on the fins new rad or rad seal but never liked using them as heard horror stories damaging other components, another one is egg white is good for tempory/emergency seal

Hose's tend to go where dubilee clips are as they compress the rubber and making it weaker but can again sometimes be easy fix as normally there is enough hose to just chop off 2-3cm and refit with dubilee again

hope this helps you a little or give you some ideas

crasin