The bane of every 16v owner

Site Subscriber Joined: 10 Jun 2004 Posts: 2317

The coolant system. Just went to put antifreeze in my 16v after the nice AA man put just plain water in. The coolant was completley rusty colour. Lovely, except i'd flushed the whole system only a few weeks previous; spent about 2 hours flushing>reverse flushing the rad!.

Anyway is it worth trying these products you add to the system that claim to 'clean' or 'flush' it through? or are they a load of bollocks?

Cheers

Huw

Level 7 User Joined: 06 Sep 2004 Posts: 230

Well i used it once on a 1.4 u9 engine it did work nice although flush once with the stuff wasn't enough. Had to do it a few times so maybe not having used it would have been the same dunno.... BUT I don't know if it had anything to do with it probably not but after a days the radiator started leaking, few weeks later I had 3 hoses which started to leak a bit so tightened all the clips, little while after that a hose burst and eventually 3 months after the actual flushing the headgasket went bigtime within a plit second all the water was out! So because of that I'm never using it again but that could just be me. I think it eventually had something to do with all the cleaning you get all the crap out that hides the holes etc which causes leaks just like when using fully synthetic oil on cars which never even had semi-synth but just natural oil in they start leaking in few 100-1000 miles (or using).

Affiliate Joined: 28 Jan 2005 Posts: 360

Huw,

When I flushed our 19's coolant system it did exactly the same. I had the hose pipe in the block, the rad, the heater matrix in both flow directions but a few days later it was still running a cruddy orange colour. I flushed it a couple more times whilst letting it run a day in between and on the 3rd flush all seemed good. I let it go a few more days and then replaced the water with a good quality glycl based anti freeze (From the local Texaco @ Â£15 for 10 liters rather than Renault @ their silly Â£35 per 5 litres) and it's still green so must have got it right (Famous last words)

Mick

Site Subscriber Joined: 10 Jun 2004 Posts: 2317

i shall try it over this coming week....and then go on the hunt for a local texaco garage!

Level 6 User Joined: 17 Apr 2004 Posts: 166

i replaced the heater matrix on my 19 and had the rad out on the lawn flushing it with a hose pipe and then flushed the systwem with hose pipe andworked a treat no orange for the next 2 years but damn heaters never worked friging air locks

i believe my mistake was not filling the heater matrix before i attached any pipe work

Forum Moderator Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 19978

put in water then chuck in a spoonfull of washing powder then run a few days then flush thoroughly.

Site Subscriber Joined: 10 Jun 2004 Posts: 2317

Chris H wrote:

put in water then chuck in a spoonfull of washing powder then run a few days then flush thoroughly.

Thats an interesting idea:)

Affiliate Joined: 28 Jan 2005 Posts: 360

Richard wrote:

i replaced the heater matrix on my 19 and had the rad out on the lawn flushing it with a hose pipe and then flushed the systwem with hose pipe andworked a treat no orange for the next 2 years but damn heaters never worked friging air locks

i believe my mistake was not filling the heater matrix before i attached any pipe work

I'm guessing you didn't undo the heater bleed screw then Wink

Forum Moderator Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 19978

19 doesn't have a heater bleed screw

Only 1 bleed screw on the radiator, the main problem is that shite radiator tbh