Tiz's Minis

Daddy's broken the mini!!

The car has had a lot more use recently as I now use it for my daily commute, 50 mile a day. I've spent the summer just using the car and not really thinking too much about it. Not thinking about it also equates to not servicing it and not really loving it.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the water temperature was getting a little hot. I had a look in the radiator and the levels were a bit low. I topped it up and all was fine for a while then it overheated again. My first thought was the cooling system had sprung a leak. I popped down to Halfords one lunchtime and brought their leak stopper. This didn't work, it still was loosing water.

The next time it started to get hot I pulled over and investigated. Water was coming out, but from the expansion time that comes off the next of the tank, there was no leak from anywhere else. Who designed that tube, it comes down the side of the radiator and drips onto the subframe. If they's made it a couple of centimeters longer it could of dripped onto the road.

I tried taking the thermostat out, this had no effect other than it taking slightly longer to overheat. Someone at work suggested that the head gasket might be blown, I hadn't seen any signs of oil in the coolant. I had another look and there did seem to be a bit of froth in the radiator, maybe that was it.

Finally it overheated so much I had to pull over and call my wife out with a bottle of water. She came out with my daughter who's two. We got it going, I got home and took the car off the road until I could sort it. Ever since then my daughter has been telling everyone that Daddy's broken the mini.

I've decided to strip the cooling system down, replace the water pump and change the head gasket. I think I need to give the car a good service at the same time.

The car needs some loving!

posted by Andy Tyrrell @ 1:45 PM