Bangernomics car of the week/day part III

alias no.9 wrote: »

I started to doubt my faith in bangernomics yesterday evening .

My previous effort let me down a few weeks back, gearbox failure 200 miles or more from home. It owed me nothing and just wasn't worth fixing so with knowing when to cut your losses being a key tenet of successful bangernomics I left it there and I found myself a very tight Volvo S60 for three figure sum last week, significant chunk of service history, timing belt done, suspension work done, NCT till January, heated leather seats and even name brand tyres with decent thread depths, thought it was the dogs.

All was well for a week until yesterday evening without a hint of a warning on my short journey home from work, the temperature gauge just shot up to the red in free moving traffic. Disaster I thought, two cars departing for the great bean can company in the sky in one month would have seen me looking for special finance offers from main dealers, shudder the thought.

I stopped to let it cool down, no obvious signs of head gasket failure or leaks and the fan was belting away, but the coolant was bubbling in the expansion bottle. I was close to home so when it had cooled a bit, I topped it up with water and figured it'd get me home. It was a little under 90º on the gauge when I set out again but it rose very quickly again (a couple of minutes) despite moving freely along the road. I got home, parked up and just walked away in frustration.

After about an hour of letting my head cool down, I went back to see how the cylinder head was doing. The only place there was any evidence of water loss was blow off from the expansion bottle. No evidence of oil in the coolant or coolant in the oil. The speed at which it had heated up again while the car was moving and the fact the fan had clearly been working convinced me that the coolant wasn’t circulating but I didn’t know if the culprit was the water pump or the thermostat. A quick glance at the coolant hoses and I could see the thermostat housing easily accessible with just two torx head bolts holding it on. Top marks to Volvo on the ease of access to the thermostat, my old 156 was a pain in the hole to change, I had it out in a couple of minutes and a few minuted later I dropped it in a pot of boiling water at which point it did exactly nothing, it was stuck shut, not top marks to Volvo, at least the Alfa ‘stats have the common decency to fail open rather than closed so you’re running cool instead of hot.

Anyway, the princely sum of €18 later, there’s a new stat in there and the needle is rock solid on 90º again and there doesn’t seem to be any other after effects. It’s probably worth flushing the cooling system at the weekend just for peace of mind. Another key tenet of bangernomics, not being afraid to get your hands dirty, has helped to restore my faith . Will keep you posted on the odyssey.

jharr100 wrote: »

http://cars.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/03-bmw-520i-sport/5883988
this has dropped from 1750 to 1650 .. now 1250.. very very tempted to have a look..

unkel wrote: »

Is that the one I posted recently? At 1250 that's a steal!!!

jharr100 wrote: »

Yeah.. same one ...
Why do I get that "too good to be true" feeling?
Just wondering why it hasn't been snapped up..

jharr100 wrote: »

http://cars.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/05-saab-95-2-0-n-c-t-tax/5957803

saab 95.. 2005 one owner,
do these suffer from the dreaded sludge death?

BorneTobyWilde wrote: »

http://cars.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/mitsubishi-galant-1-8-petrol-1995/5966436

taxed
Nct
Basically free
I WIN LOL
GAME OVER
CLOSE THREAD:D