Bongo Fury

My old 96 Freda 2.5 TD starts beautifully and performs well.... No loss of power even up very steep mountains, though the coolant gauge will climb high and then drop again on the flat. Engine temperature is good (I have a digital readout of a sensor mounted in between 2&3 at the head, it stays at around 85°), but the car is today losing a lot of coolant, & makes clouds of white smoke as soon as the engine's hot... Head gasket?
I have an Elsbett single tank veg oil conversion, and it's run well with the occasional filtering problem for many years on this.

P.s. removing the header tank cap there is only normal pressure and though the water is low it's clean, not boiling.

Mine did this when (as it turned out on stripdown) the head had cracked. One indicator might be if very soon after starting from cold the top hose goes hard/pressured, indicating something other than coolant expansion (i.e. cylinder gases) is pressurising the system. On the other hand, it'll be coolant getting into the cylinder after engine stops that causes a lot of steam on startup. What I can't explain with that hypothesis is why mine seemed to still steam some while after startup. The mornings were foggy anyway at the time of it happening so all cars had steamy exhausts, which was what made it hard for me to be sure I had a problem. Hopefully someone more techie than me can comment. The loss of coolant and temp gauge though suggest to me its steam related.

To my immense relief I found a loose hose clamp. White smoke is most likely rings gummed from the oil, which should be fixed with steam.

Make sure you bleed it properly.

Three You Tube videos show how.

Cheers Bob. Seeing as it's almost 95% water now I shall have to do that again anyway!

P.S. the Haydn alarm warned me each time the water had dropped to low, & the leak was the hose beneath the thermostat.

Distilled Waters Run Deep wrote: Sun Oct 13, 2019 4:53 pm To my immense relief I found a loose hose clamp. White smoke is most likely rings gummed from the oil, which should be fixed with steam.

Very interesting that. One of my concerns about using veg oil (remember Castrol R?) was eventual gumming of rings. But I've never heard anyone report it on a Bongo before.

Maybe not rings, because there's nothing odd about the engine oil. Perhaps something in the injectors?