weird over heat problem on a Wagon R

[davidwort 0]

just thought someone on here might have an idea what's going on with this little ugly thing,

Suzuki Wagon R, 1.3 petrol engine, drives fine for 10 miles+, warms up perfectly as it should, heat from the heater in the car etc, runs with needle bang on where it should on the temp gauge,

then suddenly it'll go mental and blow all of it's coolant out of the system.

it's even being run with the thermostat removed and behaves the same.

It overheated a year ago and had it's head pressure tested and skimmed, refitted with genuine Suzuki gasket and has run fine for a year, then the headgasket went, turned out it had rotted away like a 200,000 mile engine or something, refitted and it's started with this random cooling system over-pressurisation thing again.

could a partially blocked radiator cause this? Seems really odd that it'll run fine for some time after it's coolant is warmed up :scratch:

[Neil VR6 0]

Airlock or obstruction in a waterway?

[davidwort 0]

cheers, could well be something like that, going to remove and reverse flush the radiator, if it is an airlock it's something that repeats itself with drains/refills of the coolant so perhaps there is some obstruction causing this to happen.

[Neil VR6 0]

Pressurisation caused by heat sounds like water, for one reason or another, isn't flowing through the rad. Can you try a new off-the-shelf rad to see if that works (I presume you work for Suzuki)? Has a mechanic left an old rag stuffed up a coolant tube when the car was apart to stop crud getting into the system!? :lol:

[davidwort 0]

:) no, I'm not in the motor trade at all, but my dad works for a small independent garage and this is a longstanding customer's car that's had a few issues,

was talking to my dad last night after we picked it up from the guy to take to the garage, me following with a tow bar just in case :) and we decided the radiator needed carefully checking out at least. We drove about 15 miles before it started to overheat.

One of the other mechanics did the rebuild last year and it ran fine for 12 months, the old codger that drives it is a bit on the simple side and is difficult to get any sense from when asking about how much water it uses or how the temp behaves.

It's just odd that after fitting a new head gasket a couple of weeks ago, my dad drove it for a couple of days to check it was OK and it behaved perfectly, a week or so back with the owner and it started boiling over, I think he drives everywhere in 2nd gear which probably doesn't help :lol: but those little suzuki engines should be able to run at full revs all day long I would have thought :shrug:

[CorradoVR6-Turbo 0]

I work for suzuki and those engine are not prone for these sort of problems,but what you are describing is a head gasket or cylinder head failure.

 

When the headgasket was replaced was the head pressure tested for cracks?

 

Also suzuki do not allow us to skim ANY of the heads we have off...new only! not that it applies to you but the suzuki RB413 motor is well strong.

[davidwort 0]

yep it was pressure tested apparently, but I'll ask if it was skimmed, ta.

[davidwort 0]

the plot thickens, turns out a year ago it massively overheated even melting the timing belt cover :shock:

rings, bearings were changed and the head was very lightly skimmed (apparently it wasn't warped at all so it was really just resurfaced), they're going to check with the engineeering firm that did the head as they are apparently pretty good at doing the correct work and refusing to skim heads that they know can be a problem

it has run fine for over a year though

this time when my dad fitted a new gasket, the old one (year old) was rotten really badly, but when he fitted the new one he did follow the complex head torquing to the letter

they're going to check the radiator thoroughly, but it does seem like that head may be suspect.