(T) overheating?

hi all.my 1.2stilohas started loosing water.a couple of weeks ago,thetop radiator hose blew off,resulting in an obvious loss of coolant.i refilled her and she drove fine for two weeks.various distances from 10-80 miles.it happened again last week and mechanic took off the rad connector and replaced with a jubilee clip.ran fine for 4 days and has now blown of the bottom rad hose.can anyone help??tia.

I suspect your head gasket is blowing.

Any good garage should be able to verify this for you.

Does it gurgle a bit at the end of a journey?

no,doesnt seem to gurgle.runs well,noloss of power etc.slightly lumpy on tickover though.

Still quite possibly head gasket on its way out.

Get mechanic to do sniffer test. Also check cooling fan operates. If it doesn't you either have a dodgy fan or associated wiring (obviously), or dodgy thermostat.

could be pipes have had it and become slack as well.

is your 1.2 well serviced?

yeah,car well serviced.coolant sensor warning now showing.its a new sensor so it cant be right.fan was not cutting in,a new relay fitted and now fan running all the time..help!!!

i think deckchair did some posts on engine fans

Would suggest to me a duff relay was fitted.

no,the relay has been swapped also, with a known good one.the fan is running all the time now whether hot or cold.engine fault and coolant temp sensor fault lights on.sensor is not faulty..temp gauge doesnt seem to work either.lumpy at tickover,drives well.

The 1.2 engine is prone to head gasket failure and it sure sounds like that's what you may have. You may be lucky and you've very likely got air locks in the system after the hose blew off and that will confuse the hell out of the engine temp sensor as it gets a sudden rush of superheated water and then nothing but air, it will cause all sorts of weird cooling fan operations. The fact the "engine temp gauge isn't working" means it's just air there. You could try draining down your coolant and refilling VERY SLOWLY with all bleed screws out and cabin temp selector on hot then gradually refit each one as water appears. It's quite an involved process and needs patience to fill at a trickle. Then warm up and make sure you have water and no air appearing at each bleed screw site without scalding yourself

Look in the older Bravo section for detail on coolant refilling the 1.2 engine and overheating problems

have filled the car slowly with coolant.the car is quite lumpy at tickover,coolant sensor warning and triangle on constant,temp guage not moving,now fuel guage fluctuating.much harder to start.just back from auto spark.he says map sensor alarm and crankshaft alarm are coming up on his readings.he reckons ecu away as he says theres no info coming out.do i need to get fait to confirm this?also can a 2nd hand one from scrapyard do?tia.

Even more sounds like head gasket as it now has lumpy tickover and harder to start. That'll be the first thing to get checked out and sorted. Is your header tank starting to boil over?

The rest - i don't know- if there was no info coming out of the ecu your engine wouldn't run so that sounds like unreliable information

got the aa out he plugged in and the only reading he got was camshaft sensor.he doesnt know why temp guage not working at all or temp sensor warning coming on.could the cam sensor be responsible for these lights and the rough running as he doesnt believe the head gasket is away.sorry about this.tia

You didn;t answer the question of
"Is your header tank starting to boil over?"
Gauges are one thing but if your engine actually IS overheating then there would be a physical problem and different advice

I'll guess it's not actually overheating but tell us if it IS

I'd go back to basics. If the ecu doesn't know what the engine temperature is then you will experience poor starting/ bad tickover and heavy fuel bills as the ecu doesn't know what fuel the engine needs

So check out the engine temperature sensor circuit. Have a look in the Stilo Guides for chekcing your engine temperatures sensor.

More simply, I'd be looking for the correct resistances at the sensor (see the guide)and the correct voltages coming out of it when the engine's on and is that voltage getting back to the ecu correctly as what's coming out at the sensor may not be what's returning to the ecu

no,deckchair5.header tank has never boiled over,car has never overheated.it blew of the rad hoses when temp guage was dead on.the temp sensor is brand new as is thermostat.what you describe(poor starting,bad tickover),its also holding back when you drop a gear,then fuel guage reads zero just for a second,as you say, heavy on the juice approx 75 mils for £20 .it sure sounds very like what you describe but i dont think i can do those checks,but will pass all info to one who can.thanks for your patience!