1996 Ford Freda 2.5TD WL-T Burning coolant

[Dirty Diesel]

Good day all!

As you may have noticed, I am new here, so go easy on me! I'll get straight to the matter at hand.

At the start of December, my mother purchased a 1996 Ford Freda 2.5TD Automatic 4WD (SGL5 I believe), that was imported in 2012, when it was also converted into a campervan. After going on the 400 mile round trip to get the van, running it home and just pottering about in it for a few weeks, all was good, until she noticed that it was starting to overheat. this, for some reason, became especially apparent when going round a corner, why I don't know. I will state now, that about a year or so ago, the previous owner had an overheating problem, and had a new thermostat put in, along with new auxiliary belts, all the coolant hoses, and I believe a new water pump.

After checking things out (Only on the passenger side, for after the campervan conversion in 2012, the cupboard units prevent the folding back of the drivers seat), we found absolutely no coolant in either the expansion tank, or the radiator, and hearing of all the overheating problems that these vans are prone to (Trust Mazda to come up with a design such as the Bongo, if you ask me, especially after they pursued the Rotary engine so much, But I digress), we feared the worst. After topping up with just water, to see where any leak would be coming from, we found that it was pouring out of the pressure relief pipe next to the radiator cap on the expansion tank. With the cap on the radiator being rated at 1.1 bar, and the expansion tank being at 0.9 bar, we decided to invest in two new caps both rated at 1.1 bar. My mother set about buying those, and a low coolant warning sensor (yet to be fitted).

While waiting for parts me and my uncle looked around for any other signs of a possible leak. All we found was some coolant that had collected on the exhaust flange next to the turbo, and had been dripping onto the undertray from the bottom flange bolt. We tried starting her up and checking elsewhere for leaks. We noticed a large cloud of white smoke bellowing from the exhaust, indicating that it was burning coolant, which seems to be a lot worse when cold. Whether that was due to the fact aht it'd simply burnt a lot of it's coolant, I don't know.

When they arrived, me and my uncle set about bleeding the coolant system. After a long winded effort, we prevailed and she ran fine. That was last weekend (05-06/01/2019). Last night, we took both my Volvo V40, and the Ford Freda out. Me and my uncle followed the Freda the whole way. Blue smoke was consistent, while clouds of white smoke were being periodically spewed out, again, worse around bends. We pulled over at one point, and she noted that she wasn't getting as much power (that will be featured in my next post, about the turbo).

Fast forward to today, and she's got no coolant in the tank, but some still in the radiator. So we're left with a van she paid about 2.5k for, and it's sat there doing nothing. Hits hard that we sold our old '04 Citroen Berlingo 1.9D to buy this, which proved to be a solid van.

So, has anybody got any ideas as to where we could be leaking coolant from? We thought that maybe it was the coolant feed pipe to the turbocharger, and that maybe that had been leaking coolant onto the casing on the turbo, as well as inside it, causing the rapid burning of the coolant. Any suggestions or things to try? Any and all help, advise and tips would be greatly appreciated, as we're left with only my V40 now! Sorry about the post being so long; I wanted to include all the details I could think of.

Thanks in Advance!

[g8dhe]

If a leak isn't obvious then using the UV Dye kits available from Ebay might be the way forward, also another way is given the darker and cooler evenings take the van out to get it warmed up and then without switching it off lift the seats (or unbolt the drivers seat to gain access its quite easy to do) and see if you can see a plume of steam/venting in a torch light where its condensing in the cooler air.

[Northern Bongolow]

When ,,, if the head cracks, it is usually on cylinder no2 or number 3. It usually cracks into the exhaust port area on the head, this could be forcing coolant into the manifold when the engine is switched off, number 3 cylinder is next to the turbo.