stretch. 0 Posted April 12, 2010 Okay, so I've been pottering about my car for the last few weeks just sorting little jobs here and there, and I've decided to go ahead and takle a slow coolant leak I seem to have somewhere, Can't find any obvious leaky pipes, the one from the top of the rad to the bottle seems a little perished but still holds up to the pressure, all the other bits of pipework seem fine, albeit a bit... grimy. So while looking for said potenital leak, I've unearthed a huuuuge amount of oily grime, it's got to the point where it now feels like wet felt! Most of it seems to be concentrated to the right hand side of the block, so I'm wondering if this is just potentially the culmination of 20 years of road grime or possibly something more sinister? I've cleared a lot of the crap off and aim to keep my eye out for any weeps but is there anything I should be potentially looking out for? Oil is still golden and stays at a pretty much static level and there's no sign of emulsification under the cap. There also seems to be a loud rattling noise, according to the previous owner this is something to do with alternator shims? Anyone come across this before or is it something I'm gonna have to catch a sound clip of to help? Also found a bracket and a plug on the firewally near the arm thingy... looks like this: I also seem to have an awful lot of clear rubber tubing around the airbox area for some reason... And I plugged my rear wash tube back in, only to find that wasn't the cause of the failure to clean! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
davidwort 0 Posted April 12, 2010 oil on the rhs of the head is almost certainly from the cam cover gasket, they leak on most 16v's, a new one might fix it, sometimes a bit of gasket sealant in the corners where the seal goes up and over the curved sections near the distributor helps. I had a longstanding very slight water leak, everything seemed OK, on the end I traced it to a very small leak from the hoses that connect to the oil cooler/heat exchanger above the oil filter. your plug near the alarm bracket is definitely not a VW underbonnet connector, looks like a connector I've seen for power to radios and similar stuff so it must be for an old alarm unit not present any more. Your loud rattling may well be a pulley on the waterpump, if your car appears to have two pulleys on the waterpump, then you have the earlier setup and the pulley that is rattling is very likely to be the idler pulley that is there just to deflect the alternator belt around the waterpump, it's designed to slip but not drive the waterpump but the design isn't great and they can make a lot of noise when they wear, there's been a thread on fixing this setup with alternatives recently. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
stretch. 0 Posted April 12, 2010 Makes sense about the alarm thing, The car has a tp immobilisor so I guess that would've been the bracket for the (now non existant) siren... I wondered why I couldn't set the alarm off Thanks for the infor about the gasket and the pulley set up, I'll have to have another root around next time I get some spare time, see if I can sort out that damned noise! :D Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
