Hello

I am having some very strange problems with my heating, yesterday i managed to get my bonnet opened and had my engine looked at. I was told that it looked like a blockage , so my girlfriends dad flushed the pipes for me. He said 3 out of 4 were cold...

Anyway after a while he managed to get them all warm, but today everything is cold again. My girlfriend also has a punto and hers warms up quite quick, i left this running while revving for about 5 mins and nothing.

The thermostat must be fine because it was working yesterday, the revs are increasing there self and were stuck between 1500 there just now.

Any ideas?

checked actual water level? has it got coolant in it or just water?

if its just water it'll have proberly rusted the heatermatrix up, or blocked it with gunk.


sitting revving for 5mins from cold doesn't do any engine any good and won't warm th car up as the engien isn't under laod, better to drive it around for 5mins, on a proper road not just around the block.


5mins @ 30mph will see it up half way to normal working temp (usually) 7mins to full working temp, on a 60mph road, 3-5mins will see it at full working temp and hot air in the heating.


normally puntos/pandas are VERY quick to produce heat thru the heating, buy any other car and you could be waiting 20mins!

HI

Theres no anti freeze in the water, However im going to add some when it is bled today. I went out after your post and checked levels, the car took about 3.5 litres of water.

The heating is working now, temp guage is sitting around halfway

There is some white smoke coming from the back of the exhaust. It seems like water? any ideas?

That could be bad news im afraid... often a symptom of headgasket failure.

Xen said:

That could be bad news im afraid... often a symptom of headgasket failure.

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Resulting from the lack of coolant...(note... NOT pure water) why oh why do people neglect checking this stuff every week at least, I cant get my head round it.

if you've had normal water in there for any decent length of time (more than week) you'll have caused irrepubale damage to the system.

white smoke = something in the engine is burning, probably your headgasket/water getting into the cylinder head, either because HG was going in th first place, or lack of water has caused hot spots adn caused HG to burst, or worse, cylinder head might have warped/cracked thru = need a new one.

they only take about 4-5litres of coolant anyway so you've burn't rather a lot already = something is defo gone somewhere.


also, you WILL need to bleed teh system properly, theres a little tap on the heater matrix hose and one of the top left of the radiator itself, you need to open these (when engine cold) and fill with coolant, then run engine briefly and do again etc. do that with th top tap first then the lower one

Hi

Thanks, its had no coolant in it from about 6/7pm last night. It has not been ran, apart from today when i took it out a drive for 5mins.

If HG i would not be getting any heating surely?

I was told i had a blockage, could this be the cause?. Can you suggest a decent coolant?

My first car you see, and im pretty new to all this. Been reading as much as possible , but the obvious things such as coolant aint covered too well. Suppose its regarded that i should know this stuff.

The white smoke is not bad to be honest, but when i leave it running idle theres usually a small pool of water below exhaust.