newbie heating not getting warm

[The Great Pretender]

It would be great to have, on Steves coolant mastersheet, brief summary of symptoms for situations where:

1) System is permantely open/flowing (thermostat removal/modification/open failure)
2) System flow partially or fully stopped (thermostat fails closed, rad. partically blocked etc.)
3) (trickier this one - are there well defined symptoms?)) coolant flow reduced by water pump impairment/failure

...along with classic ones due to coolant loss or air in system etc. A sort of fault finding matrix

1) Long warm up, over cool running during most conditions, extra engine wear.
2) I think this is the trickiest one to answer, the more load you put the engine under the more heat it produces. So does stop
start town traffic. Light load running and easy motorway cruising would PROBABLY allow a normal temp with these problems.
3) Pump impairment reduced flow could lead to the same as in 2 and also the following problems. Failure will cause overheating, over pressurisation, hose failure. The head will be exposed to extreme temperature that can lead to cracking or warping leading to gasket failure.
This relates to the diesel engine, there are certain differences with the 2 and 2.5 petrol engines but most relates to all.

[mikeonb4c]

It would be great to have, on Steves coolant mastersheet, brief summary of symptoms for situations where:

1) System is permantely open/flowing (thermostat removal/modification/open failure)
2) System flow partially or fully stopped (thermostat fails closed, rad. partically blocked etc.)
3) (trickier this one - are there well defined symptoms?)) coolant flow reduced by water pump impairment/failure

...along with classic ones due to coolant loss or air in system etc. A sort of fault finding matrix

1) Long warm up, over cool running during most conditions, extra engine wear.
2) I think this is the trickiest one to answer, the more load you put the engine under the more heat it produces. So does stop
start town traffic. Light load running and easy motorway cruising would PROBABLY allow a normal temp with these problems.
3) Pump impairment reduced flow could lead to the same as in 2 and also the following problems. Failure will cause overheating, over pressurisation, hose failure. The head will be exposed to extreme temperature that can lead to cracking or warping leading to gasket failure.
This relates to the diesel engine, there are certain differences with the 2 and 2.5 petrol engines but most relates to all.

Really useful that TGP - capture that Steve

I will get shot down for this, but in the case of (1) I think its possible you might even see the temp gauge move a bit (up to 11.00 stationary in traffic and/or on hot days, but drifting down a bit once you start moving at proper speed on a cold winter day). I'm not sure the Bongo gauge is the only one that is damped - it may be a feature on other cars (if someone is certain thats wrong, please say). If that is the case and my old Nissan Sunny had a similar gauge (and it seemd to as it never went above 11:00), then its gauge gave away cold running by drifting down from the 11:00 position (or else - as TGP says - taking an age to get there). Extra engine wear may be hard to spot so may not be a useful diagnostic? I would add heaters running cold as a possible, though other things might also cause this (airlock?)