Thread: Trouble in my water ....

Run coolant first up,cooling systems are designed to run under pressure and with coolant,both stop the ''water'' boiling off when driven hard,or start saving for repairs. Pat

Originally Posted by PAT303

Run coolant first up,cooling systems are designed to run under pressure and with coolant,both stop the ''water'' boiling off when driven hard,or start saving for repairs. Pat

...it (ethylene glycol, AKA 'radiator coolant') is also a corrosion inhibitor, so can prevent corrosion within the block and associated cooling passages.

Looks very much like a head gasket issue- this can cause oil or combustion gas ingress into the cooling system.

Get your coolant checked for combustion gases. Your mechanic can do this for you, or there are kits you can buy for DIY.
The froth can also be caused by oil forming an emulsion in the coolant, which is my bet by looking at the pics.

3rd'd, that foam sure looks like water/oil mix that has boiled.
I would never run any LR without coolant at the least for the corrosion inhibitors, i've had a water pump and timing cover with pin hole corrosion in an RRC.

Thanks - hadn't thought of the anti corrosion qualities of the coolant.

The water is clear but the inside of the expansion tank is dirty, so I'm sure that there's a lot of crap and scum in the system now. Do you know if the coolant act as a flushing/cleaning agent that I can replace in a few Km's, or would you suggest getting the full system cleaned out to start again?

So you have been running just water for several years?
Have you used demineralized water?

If not your problems will probably be big ones. I would expect lots of corrosion on water hose stubs and in the water pump and the radiator to be corroded and many tubes blocked. You could even have corrosion between the oil gallery and water gallery or a corroded pin hole in a head

The immediate problem to me is that you have a blown headgasket which is leaking from an oilway into the water gallery. There are only 2 places on the engine that they are close and that is at the back of the block/head join on the left bank and opposite on the right bank.
RV8 engines will go a long time if given regular oil changes and good quality coolant changed regularly, but if either are neglected they can turn into a money pit.
Regards Philip A

Flush the system but do not use one of those powdered flushing additives, but as Philip said you really need to address the head gasket before worrying about coolant now.

Originally Posted by Ezeman

Thanks - hadn't thought of the anti corrosion qualities of the coolant.

The water is clear but the inside of the expansion tank is dirty, so I'm sure that there's a lot of crap and scum in the system now. Do you know if the coolant act as a flushing/cleaning agent that I can replace in a few Km's, or would you suggest getting the full system cleaned out to start again?

The crap in the expansion tank is corrosion from the block and other surfaces touched by the coolant.
Tap water can also act as a conductor of electricity, speeding up any galvanic reactions between dissimilar metals connected within the system (iron block, alloy heads, steel fasteners etc).

There is no detergent quality of the coolant proper, if you need to clean the system, you would be best to go to a radiator shop (Natrad, etc) and get a power flush. You can just put the garden hose up the radiator bottom coolant hose and flush it from there, but you wont have as good a clean.
Only issue is, this can tend to open up more issues if the system is badly corroded. I'm talking opening up pinholes in radiators, causing leaks where rubber hoses meet metal pipes, etc.