My Brava has just started to overheat. it started quite suddenly. My mate reconed that the water pump was fooked. Another reconed the cylinder head gasket.
I replaced the water pump and still the problems there. The radiator is cold, even when car at temp, and cold air comes through heater. No performance seems to be lost apart from the rapid overheating. could this be thermosat?
I ould hate to change thermo, to find it is cylinder gasket and vice versa

Any Ideas welcome.
:roll:

check there is not a dirty connection on the fan, Lynseys Ka overheated last week and this was what was wrong

The fan wont kick in because the radiator is cold. I have looked under the oil cap to see if there is a discolouration in the oil, it appears to be ok, it does not look mayo colour.

can the thermo be bypassed?

sorry dude, im not mechanically minded.

What i can say is though, on my old Punto the fan was blowing out only cold air and it was overheating and it was the cylinder head on that. It was also misfiring, but there was no mayo on the oil cap or anything

My difficulty is Ive blown a head gasket and thermostate in quick succession when I had the Punto.

Symptoms are fairly similar. But I think the fan still kicked in with the headgasket?

Best get a garage to look at it mate!

yeah, the fan didnt kick in on my punto cos i broke it

With the power of deduction, i think it is a safe bet that the thermostat is the most likely culprit, if the fan kicks in when the head gasket is away then i would safley assume that the thermostat must be stuck shut, not allowing hot water into the radiator to be cooled down. The engine still runs the ways it should, no misfire's.

I am no mechanic either, but, am a keen diy guy with a garage.

Would anyone agree? My car is the 1.4 Brava :?: [/img]

I take it you have bled the coolant system?

i tried to bleed but there was no flow, i never had the heater on whilst attempting to bleed. i have since read that you need to have the heater on to bleed and need to have a fast idle speed. I put this down to the thermostat being stuck shut.
I have been told that the thermostat can be bypassed by ripping the guts out the housing. If it works i will buy new themo. I hope it aint the cylinder head

I finally got round to whipping off the cylinderhead and had a look at the gasket, the Gasket was worn but not to baddly damaged. I got one of my mates to look at the gasket to tell me where it failed as it was not obvious. He runs a small garage and spottted the fault.
I sent the Head to George Brown and Sons down at the shore in Leith, Davie Brown was helpful and had the head skimmed and returned to me after about an hour. New head Gasket kit and Timing belt.

Water Pump £35
Thermostat £25
Gasket Kit £35
Head Skim £35
Timing Belt £19

Total £149

Time to do job 8 hours

Look on my face, priceless.

I read some posts which said ther were a couple of places which could do this job for £300. That aint bad at all. It has taken alot of punishment my car, and i am surprised i aint had these problems until now.

glad you have finally got it sorted

Cheers Puntoman

The biggest problem i have had was not being able to set the timing myself. I had to get a mate to do that.

So thats me on the road at last, sorry i missed St Andrews, might see you all at the next meeting.

if you note my earlier post which goes on about the powers of deduction!!!!!!


Sometimes things ain't that obvious..