Bongo Fury

hi y'all,
on friday night i noticed a rather large puddle under galileo, i got her home ok in a cloud of steam.
as soon as i could(sunday as it happens) i decided to investigate the problem, i lifted both seats and started the engine. after a short time i noticed the coolant loss and with the help of a torch i located the problem.
about midway on the engine on the drivers side, there is a narrow hose which goes down and back to a steel pipe junction. at the end connected to the engine, there was a pin-hole leak and coolant was squirting upward then running down. on father mikes advice i replaced the hose with a length from halfords and topped up the coolant. mike advised me how to bleed the system. i ran the engine with the heaters on full blast and bled off quite a bit of mucky coolant and topped up with clean water.
i then went round the block to check the temp which went up from 11 to near 2o'clock.
i went home and bled the system some more and topped up, went for another run and it seemed ok
tonight i went for a longer run( a couple of miles) and the temp went up again to near 3o'clock, each time i idled the engine the temp went down to normal.
when i got home i carefully loosened the cap on the expansion tank. there was quite a bit of pressure and i left it to bubble off and then replaced the cap. i am going to take galileo on a slightly longer run tomorrow to see how she is. if she has settled i will have to add more anti freeze as the mix is quite weak now. how much a/f should there be? i know its 2 parts to 1 part a/f but how much liquid does the system hold?

cheers

alex.

I hope Galileo is ok - 3 o'clock on the temp gauge seems rather extreme - have you got a Masons alarm fitted which would make the readings more sensitive?

The total capacity for the system is 13 litres (I believe), but I don't think you can ever get all the coolant from every pipe & the rear matrix. It sounds like you definitely need to bleed the system, so if you have made a permanent repair, I'd be tempted to empty the whole lot out, reverse flush the rad & then refil with a 50/50 mix following the guidance in the factsheet on coolant change & bleeding. Good luck - I know what a nightmare the water works can be.

Rather than waste costly antifreeze, I think its OK to use just water for a short period while testing. there's a debate about whether it should be distilled water though (or rainwater as someone wisely pointed out)

More's to the point Trekie.. you call your Bongo Galileo?
Galileo?? Figaro! Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me...!!

NO, NO, NO, NO, i will not let this go.

...Oh, mama mia..!

better still ask "father mike" if he'd let you have some of his "holy water"

flippa wrote:better still ask "father mike" if he'd let you have some of his "holy water"

Thas a "Ted" bit over the top...

Totally agree with Simon, any mucky looking water in the system, give a thorough flush before re-filling with the coolant

Sounds to me as though you haven't got the stat to open yet. You must do this to bleed the system properly. I hope no harm has been done, once the temp gauge starts moving things are getting serious.

i ran the engine for quite a long time whilst bleeding and then went straight out for a test run. a full flush sounds a good idea.
galileo is named after a starfleet shuttlecraft(see my avatar)

cheers

alex and jan

Get that bottom hose "HOT"

trekie wrote: galileo is named after a starfleet shuttlecraft(see my avatar)

cheers

alex and jan

...& i was thinking thats one hell of a pimp on yer Bongo!!
Hope things "look up" for Galileo.

Yip, it does sound as if you haven't had the stat open yet alex...The air butts up against the stat till the coolant is hot enough to open it (82 deg if stat ok). Keep the heaters on, and check that a steady, constant heat emits from them both before any test runs. A 50/50 mix of coolant is a bit ott for the uk alex, 30%-35% will do just fine over here, as it rarely drops to -15 in liverpool!

Remember that it's impossible to bleed all the air out of the system alex, the rest of the bleeding occurs naturally overnight as the bongo engine cools, the hot air in the system slowly rises to the expansion tank, then vents off as the coolant cools,that's why you'll notice that the level of the coolant has dropped overnight, and will need another litre or so to top up.

The hose that you replaced, from the crankcase just above the starter motor to the metal inlet pipe for the rear heater, is quite a complicated shape and when I tried to replace mine with a piece of straight hose I found it impossible to run it the same way as the original. In fact to enable a connection on either end would have required the hose to be bent at almost 90 degrees in three places so I ended up trimming the original hose to take out the split part near the crankcase and replacing it whils waiting for a brand new one to be delivered.

So my point is, if the new 'pipe run' is a bit tight in places have you disrupted the coolant flow enough to cause a high temperature, is your rear heater getting hot - if not you neeed to rectify.

i didnt find any problem with fitting the replacement hose, i made sure there were no sharp bends which would impede the water flow. i did consider triming the original hose but i did not trust it not to perforate again even in the short term. the rear heater was getting hot.
as a matter of interest, would water from a dehumidifier and an aircon be suitable to use if it was collected in a plastic container?

cheers

alex

bigdaddycain wrote:A 50/50 mix of coolant is a bit ott for the uk alex, 30%-35% will do just fine over here, as it rarely drops to -15 in liverpool!

I thought 50/50 was manufacturers recommendation (where did I get it from - handbook? workshop manual?) so simply stuck to it. There had been talk on here too about corrosion prevention poperties of the antifreeze plus the greater effectiveness of antifreeze mix as a coolant, and all that made me disinclined to deviate. But maybe I've been too conscientious?