Don't lend the car to the wife...........

This all makes my post yesterday about a little noise a bit incidental.....

Wife borrows car, along the journey (mercifully short) she notices the steering getting 'heavy', and "a funny little noise from the front", what she doesn't notice (does any woman?) is the temp guage edging ever upwards.

After several miles, and in mid-turn accross two lanes of pitch-black country road into our gate, the car stops dead. I get home a short while later to find the road blocked, plod on scene and a band of happy helpers who manage to shove the truck into our yard - big thanks to all involved.

On inspection the belt has shredded and the viscous coupling, fan blades and spindle have sheared from the water pump.

Funnily enough, there doesn't seem to be too much obvious damage. The rad is intact as are all the hoses cables etc, so it seems the fan just sheared straight of and thankfully just settled in the plastic cowling.

The battery obviously discharged without the alternator and so I've spent the morning charging it up and hope to give it a go on the key later.

Now for the biggie, how hot did it get and did the engine seize up ?????????

Women drivers:doh:

you could hope the battery died before engine got to hot and this is why it stopped.

i dont fancy your chances but good luck i hope its not ffoooked on you

You've two choices:

keep the car, fix it, put the wife in the doghouse

or

apologise profusely for having put her in such an awful situation as to have to drive your horrible unreliable vehicle, sell the car and stay out of the doghouse yourself!

It lives, it has life - well for 20 seconds or so then I turned it off just in case.

I've had a look at the oil, seems ok and apart from coolant spraying everywhere it all seems to have come out pretty much unscathed. I think that the belt must have started to go almost at the outset but kept sufficient tension for the short journey home.

When the missus stopped dead and put full lock on is probably the moment it all happened. I'm going to order the water pump, gasket, belt pulley (as I can't see how the old one wasn't damaged), belt etc off Fleabay.

As the viscous coupling and fan have come away together, without a vice or similar how difficult will if be to separate them from the sheared pump shaft for refitting or should I just get a second-hand fan + coupling as well.

Any other signs of overheating damage i should look out for?

Cheers

You realy need to clamp the shaft in a vice but you could use a grinder to carve 2 flat spots on the shaft and use a big spanner
And as for overheating damage check your top hose with engine at full temp if its hard to sqeeze it has too much presure in the system and you dont want to know what that means
I would think on a short journey even without a fan it wouldnt get so hot it damaged it

kieronf said:

Any other signs of overheating damage i should look out for?

Cheers

Click to expand...

yeah ... wife bearing sharp knife !!! she has my sympathy from a fellow LADY driver

SADDLESORE said:

yeah ... wife bearing sharp knife !!! she has my sympathy from a fellow LADY driver

Click to expand...

i agree!!! what sort of a bloke sends the mrs out in a car that obviously he hasn't maintained the car's fanbelt and knew a noise was coming from the engine!!! tut tut

she could have been crossing 3 lanes of traffic on the motorway!! shame on you

go to the dog house yourself to save time

You tell 'im ladies

i however am used to the BEEP!! BEEP!! BEEP!! "gearbox fault", gauge in the red and coolant down the drivers wing as my more affectionately name "MANGY RANGEY" has done it serveral times

The fan belt broke on my Vectra a few years ago and it began seriously overheating immediately - no chance of getting anywhere safe to stop. Hopefully yours isn't the same.

Amazing how much damage it did when it went too! Even damaged the cam belt.