After a sprint up the M1 I have discovered that my 2.25 diesels temp creeps well up towards the red when subjected to longer periods of speed.

I have noticed that the fan belt occasionally slips so thats going to be my first real port of call but I,m wondering if I may be looking at a blown head gasket as I seem to remember similar problems with a previous series 3.
BUT when I flipped the bonnet and had a gander I,ve noticed mucky water staining to the top of the radiator,the heater doesn,t work and I,ve just found that the overflow bottle is full to the brim!There is also a whiteish smoke on tick over.
Theres no mayo on the filler cap and if anything she needs a little oil to be full to the mark when cold

Any ideas what I should be looking at first please gentlemen?

water marks and a full tank would suggest over full rad to me.

did it hit the red or not?

had a similar fault on mine, it was caused by a partially blocked rad.

hope for your sake its the hg as its less hassle and cheaper than changing the rad.

Just short of the red mate but we were getting there

Just stuck my finger in the rad top and there seems to be some muck in there so a flush may be in order.

Finding a few bits that want doing now and I need to pull my finger out and get em sorted

i would say blocked rad. they do crap up dead easy. caused by using tap water in the cooling system.

try taking the cap off and poking a piece of thin wire down one of the channells (i used 0.8 mig wire). if it wont go all the way down or comes out covered in thick brown crap i would guess its a blocked or partially blocked rad.

when it happened on mine i tried flushing, reverse flushing and using a rad flush addative from halfords, none of it worked and with all the addatives, coolant i bought it worked out not a lot more expensive and a lot less time consuming just to change the rad. (rad flush £8, 2 lots of coolant @ £25 a time)

by all means try and clear it first, yours may not be as badly blocked as mine was, but if you cant, the cheapest place i found for rads was Car Radiators, Car Heaters, Automotive Air Conditioning (£102.54) i found a second hand one on ebay for about £70. i also looked into a repair/recore and both would have cost more than a new rad.

i think all landys have a to do list, goes hand in hand with ownership.
good luck with it and i hope this all helps.

Cheers mate.I,ll be looking at that over the weekend then

Remember the weekly repair list oh so wellNever ending unless you try and keep on top.Onwards and upwards

Fan belt tightened,oil topped up and the radiator is flowing nicely.
All is good in the world today