I'm such a tool sometimes !

Other day I realised my rad has a tiny leak, (as in it drips a drop about twice a minute) so nothing bad (but if anyone has a decent cheap rad for sale near me let me know). :wink:

Anyway I toppped up the water at the weekend and today I needed to drive it to work as our lass took our Polo! So I get about 3/4 of the way into town and stop at some traffic lights, at which point I see steam gushing outa my front grill so automatically I think great, the rads blown. I then limp it to my work car park, lift the bonnet and realise I never put back on the resivour cap !!!!!! Doh !!!

So now I have 6 bottles of evian water in my bag ready to fill up my cooling system to get home tonight ! I'm such a tool !

My wife worked at VW and she forgot to do that on a customers brake resevoir as she was getting grief off her boss to get the car out and other stuff.
needless to say the light came on the dash and the "gentleman" was less than polite when he came back with car. She was in tears and she did not know what to say.

It happens to us all….

Ironically, its not such a bad idea to leave the cap off, if your rad has a slight leak. The cooling system is pressurised, for efficiency reasons. But when its pressurised and you have a leak, it leaks more/quicker. So leaving the cap off will lose you a bit of efficiency (probably not too important at this time of year), but you'd leak far less coolant, obviously this is healthier than running low/out of coolant.

So long as you haven't lost the cap, that is…..

time for a quick repair of a radiator me thinks anyone got any gum. i hope you've still got the cap.

Kind of unrelated but Evian spells Naive backwards 8)

and new mk1 rads are only ?30 from B&B Components (tierod69 on ebay)

If you have lost the cap, it may be wedged between the suspension turret and the bulkhead.

Not that I've forgotten to tighten mine up in the past, or anything :roll:

HTH

Rich

if you think thats bad ive done something extremely naughty!

i ignored the buzzer from the dash when i went round a roundabout, thinking it would be an electrical fault, how wrong i was!

took it to my dad and he said it was because when the car goes round the corner the oil is sloshing to one side, ie, there was not so much as a drip in it

filled it up straibht away and luckily cant hear any tappet noises or knocking, no drop in performance, but im dreading that its done other damage, caught it fairly quick though so may have been lucky

Anyway, car is having oil and filter change tomorrow

oops

AntF said

i ignored the buzzer from the dash when i went round a roundabout, thinking it would be an electrical fault, how wrong i was!

took it to my dad and he said it was because when the car goes round the corner the oil is sloshing to one side, ie, there was not so much as a drip in it

On some of the older buses at work you can get the oil buzzer to go off round corners no matter how full it is.

'tis a mighty fun game to play when you're running back in to the depot on a night.

Luckily the cap was still on my strut top where I left it so i just screwed it back on.

Think I'll get a new rad next month.

did a similar thing but with the oil filler cap safe to say it was a mess under the bonnet when i got home the car sat ne the drive for a day and i got my mate to take me to a scrappy for a replacement got home and found the original in the fan cover double doh right there lol!