coolant, oh s!#@! part two

[leadtrombone]

Ok. so i took my touring back to the dealer. And through a bit of haggling. they agreed to pay for parts and me for labour on the head gasket. Still a bit shafted but hey. A little help better than nothing right.

I take the car in and the shop does the head gasket, a new water pump, and timing belt for 380euro labor. I get the car back and seems like noe problem Had to add little bit of coolant. thinking ok maybe they just didn't bleed it right.

the guy from the shop tels me to change the coolant once or twice to help get rid of the leftover oil..

I change the oil, coolant and sparkplugs (while i am at it).

the coolant looks clean. just a little bit of oil specks. jives with my idea that it is cleaning out the residue...

The oils looks a little green for my tastes, but i thinks it is the old oil....(howver there is a tag from the shop that says they just put new oil in...)

fill up oil, fill up coolant and bleed it. (this was tuesday last week on fri the wife and i are going on a weekend trip to the black forest... approx 300km away)

every thing seems fine. Friday morning (i forgot in my excitment to check fluids properly) we get of the autobahn and by the time we get maybe 30-40 km out the coolant light on my super panel above the mirror goes on.. ....

fill up probly about 3 liters of water on the 300km trip downthere. a liter or son while downthere for 2 days. and 6 liters of water on the way back (300km)


WTF... i think i have only water in the damn thing right now. Aaagh. this shit is pissing me off.

the only place that i can see any spot of leakage it the upper radiater hose. it looks damp but could that be the answer to the loss of 6-12 liters of coolant over 600KM???

I seemd to be filling in 1.5L of water every 30-40 km when i drove 130kmh (4000rpm) and about 90 km when i get it about 120 or less(3000-3500rpm)


sorry for the long post, but i try to get all the ifo out there for you troubleshoooters. Maybe one of you all got an answer for me...

the question is.. where the hell is it going. It is not burning it.,

if the head gasket is good. does that mean the block is bad/crackes. I assume they would have found a crack in th ehead when it went in for machineing prior to instalment.???


any ideas...

 

[cliff]

are you using water or coolant? my 325ic was mysteriously losing coolant, although i could see a drip on the garage floor once and a while and was using water to top it off. finally stopped that and used antifreeze and the coolant leak ceased....I think I had too much water in it (the desert of New Mexico, rarely, if ever gets below freezing) due to being thrifty and in fact the weak mix was boiling and steam was escaping through maybe a not up to par hose clamp or wherever. anyway, popped for a gallon of antifreeze and the problem went away.
these magical solutions always drive me nuts cause i never really know what the
heck the original issue in fact was....all i know is it went away....good luck

 

[echothreezero]

The quickest way to find out is have the cooling system pressure tested. It'll cost you a few dollars, but may save you replacing perfectly good parts in the search for the problem.

While there get them to run a compression test to make sure the new gasket is OK.

 

[leadtrombone]

thanks guys.. im hoping.. i was just putting in water when i added fluid as i just did not have anything else at the time..