Bongo Fury

A question to check wether I'm about to be fleeced by a "Bongo Friendly" garage.

Van had new cylinder head etc fitted after I bought it (sore point and never trust a vicar) and I also had it serviced, flushed new antifreeze.

This was mid Oct and today after many freezing days in Scotland the van lost all power and basically chugs in a not very happy way.

Took it the 200 yards to my mechanic Gordon who checked the ratio of antifreeze to water in the expansion tank to find it contained only water - nice pure Scottish stuf but water nonetheless.

Now it has to be said Gordon is a good guy and didn't carry out the C/Head work though he did suspect the fluid may have frozen due to days of -5 temps and felt this could have made the C/H gasket go pop.

On phoning the garage who did carry out the work they repeatedly came back with the line "we put antifreeze in" and "we need to find out where the antifreeze has gone". Now I'm no techy but as I said I couldn't imagine the antifreeze separating itself from the water and going on holiday! I've been a good boy also for all of two months and only the oil has needed a top up so any extra water in the system wasn't put there by me.

I guess I'm looking for someone who will say - yes it's possible for the expansion tank to only have water in it trust the garage or ....if there's only water in the expansion tank then that's all that is in your Bongo.

Can't help but feel the co-incidence of first real frosts and van going boing seem somewhat fishy.

Cheers Dave

if you put no water in and the garage put coolant mix in then there should be coolant mix in.

If you lost all the coolant where did the water come from?
even if the level went down there would be some coolant left.

I think the Garage is mistaken and forgot the antifreeze in the coolant mixture.

As long as you know you have not substituted the water for anything else, then there is no way 100% of the antifreeze can disapear. Even if you were topping up ½ a liter a month, you couldn't dilute it to such a degree in that time.
You need to speak to said garage, as if there is damage, they are the cause.

I am a techy, and it certainly sounds like they made a mistake to me.

Mistakes do happen, but unfortunatley it is my experience that the garage world are never to happy to admit to them so nobody else can learn from them.

Thank your lucky holiday travelling stars that the aircraft engineering industry has an excellent level of integrity, hence the fantastic rate of success. Very high levels of supervision are the protection in the first place though.

Not all garages mind, there are a few gems out there so stick with them and treat them well when you find them.

Thanks for that, even I kept pointing out the fact that as there is water then how come there isn't antifreeze but they kept the broken record approach going anyway. My mechanic also said that even if I'd watered it down there would still be antifreeze. I'll speak to them again though as they are listed in the Bongo Friendly list on the site and I'd imagine they'd still want to keep a good press.

Cheers David

If you live near Edinburgh I have an antifreeze hydrometer and can test the coolant for you. There's just the possibility that Gordon's tester isn't compatable with the antifreeze they've used. Is there any colour to the coolant?

It's another sub zero night up here and if you've no antifreeze in your system then you're liable to cause more damage

Hi
Suck out a bit of the coolant, put it in a plastic bottle and put it in the freezer....that's good for minus 18 deg. C...if it's frozen....you're stuffed
Helen

Stick yer finger into the water and taste it.
Don't swallow.
If its sweet, it contains anti freeze.

But seeing as you have already been told by another mechanic that it is plain water, with anti-freeze, then get onto the garage that did the original job and argue the toss.

The only way that anti-freeze could be separated from plain water is if they were still in their bottles in their original state,and you put one of the bottles on the other side of the room.


P.S. Good thread title....like it...