I too thought my head gasket was a bit suspect but have come to realise that the TD5s suffer with alot of problems related to those crappy spring clips. I've seen sooooo many of these crappy joints leak on TD5 engines as a result of crappy spring clips. Seems that as the corrosion sets in they become weaker. I had 3 clips that were leaking on mine until I finally got to the bottom of it. And I've been getting the smell of anti-freeze in the cab too, so I suspect one of those clips is letting by on the heater matrix too (but that's such a pain in the backside job to do that I've just been topping the 5mm of water it uses every 2-3 months back up)
Make sure when you replace to stainless worm drive clips that you clean all the old flaky anti-freeze and corrosion off the connecting pipes too.
Pipes on mine never go hard and the amount of water that gets used is minimal. Replaced the cap too as these are notorious for failing on just about every car today. Coolant pressure always normal when the engine cools down and I even put a bottle over the header tank's over pressure dump pipe to see if anything gets dropped and not a single drop. I even used a UV Dye test and haven't found a single spot on any engine pipework, making me think that the heater matrix is leaking as it smells of it in the cab.
Main one I've found that almost always seems to leak is the connection at the top near-side of the engine, replace with a jubilee clip and this often solves the water leak problem. Some have problems with the metal pipework mess underneath where it's rotted and been bodged back together from time to time.
Make sure when you replace to stainless worm drive clips that you clean all the old flaky anti-freeze and corrosion off the connecting pipes too.
Pipes on mine never go hard and the amount of water that gets used is minimal. Replaced the cap too as these are notorious for failing on just about every car today. Coolant pressure always normal when the engine cools down and I even put a bottle over the header tank's over pressure dump pipe to see if anything gets dropped and not a single drop. I even used a UV Dye test and haven't found a single spot on any engine pipework, making me think that the heater matrix is leaking as it smells of it in the cab.
Main one I've found that almost always seems to leak is the connection at the top near-side of the engine, replace with a jubilee clip and this often solves the water leak problem. Some have problems with the metal pipework mess underneath where it's rotted and been bodged back together from time to time.
