BobbyOLeary
New member
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2010
- Messages
- 3
- Points
- 1
Hey guys,
I'm an owner of an Mk1 Fiat Punto 60sx (1242cc), had the car for the last 4 years but the thing is 11 years old (1999 reg). Had a few problems over the years but replaced them all myself (timing belt, water pump, head gasket, catalytic converter).
The most recent fix was due to my own ineptness. I had the car filled with water after the head gasket change about 7 months ago and had forgotten to change it to proper coolant. Cue the snowfall over Christmas and my car froze over completely. I tried starting it one day and shredded the timing belt as the water pump was frozen. The freezing also pushed out two frost plugs, one below the inlet manifold and one conveniently located behind the flywheel.
I replaced both with new parts and put the car back together and filled it back with coolant and performance wise it runs just like it used to. Two problems have come up though, it now runs quite cold (lower than the first quarter on the dial) and stays there consistently. Concurrently I've seen a big drop off in the mpg I can get. When I bought it I could get up to 400 miles on a well driven tank and now I'm down to about 250 on the same tank. I had guessed damage from the freezing but the engine runs perfectly? I'm stumpted by this.
Apologies for the long message but I wanted to include as much detail as possible! Anyone seen anything like this? Probably the first thread where a Fiat Punto is complaining of running too cold!
Cheers,
Bob.
I'm an owner of an Mk1 Fiat Punto 60sx (1242cc), had the car for the last 4 years but the thing is 11 years old (1999 reg). Had a few problems over the years but replaced them all myself (timing belt, water pump, head gasket, catalytic converter).
The most recent fix was due to my own ineptness. I had the car filled with water after the head gasket change about 7 months ago and had forgotten to change it to proper coolant. Cue the snowfall over Christmas and my car froze over completely. I tried starting it one day and shredded the timing belt as the water pump was frozen. The freezing also pushed out two frost plugs, one below the inlet manifold and one conveniently located behind the flywheel.
I replaced both with new parts and put the car back together and filled it back with coolant and performance wise it runs just like it used to. Two problems have come up though, it now runs quite cold (lower than the first quarter on the dial) and stays there consistently. Concurrently I've seen a big drop off in the mpg I can get. When I bought it I could get up to 400 miles on a well driven tank and now I'm down to about 250 on the same tank. I had guessed damage from the freezing but the engine runs perfectly? I'm stumpted by this.
Apologies for the long message but I wanted to include as much detail as possible! Anyone seen anything like this? Probably the first thread where a Fiat Punto is complaining of running too cold!
Cheers,
Bob.