Bustrucket

Active Member
Alright folks, my recently acquired P38A (1999 Thor 4.6) has a nasty habit of blowing water pipes.

The previous owner admitted replacing one of the pair of pipes at the top of the engine bay to the bulkhead. The trip home from purchase was uneventful for 75 miles and then it blew the 3-way hose a mile from home. I cut back the old hose, refilled the cooling system and went for short test drives, then longer ones. Today (around 100 miles after blowing the 3-way hose) it blew out the same hose in a different place. Bodged it back together and got it home, but I’m trying to work out why it’s blowing hoses.

Car is a 99 4.6, 119,000 miles on the clock. Not LPG’d, done only 3000 miles in the last few years.

Head gasket checks: oil is a lovely golden brown, no mayo. Coolant is light blue, no sludge. No steam from exhaust.

Known issues: expansion tank cap has fallen to bits, the drive back today was with the innards removed because they’d fallen apart. Hoses are old, the inside of the bit I removed today shows evidence of being about to split in several places.

Rad looks new, ally bits are still shiny.

The car doesn’t overheat when the cooling system retains its coolant - today I did around 40 miles of mixed A-road, dual carriageway and town driving with the temperature right in the middle of the gauge, no issues until the hose went pop. I had the thermostat off today as part of grafting in a section of pipe as a get-me-home, the valve opens but needs a fair bit of pressure to do so. The receipts say it was new in 2015.

On Friday I’m looking to order a new hose kit, expansion tank cap and thermostat. Anywhere else I should be looking, or anything else I can check?

Cheers
 
Gems or Thor? I think you need to go through the renewing a few bits Stage before delving any deeper. Thermostat needs to be OEM not cheap crap. If your receipt is for £15 or so it's cheap. 60. + it's a good un. The hoses are under a bit of pressure and can blow off so change these.
I'm guessing it's a gems because it's got blue coolant!
 
If the hoses show signs of splitting, it's not surprising they are failing. replace all the old hoses and the expension tank cap and see where you go from there.
 
Thor engine. It’s got blue coolant because that’s all that was available ready-mixed. It’ll be dropped out and replaced with the right spec stuff when all the hoses get replaced.
 
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Thor engine. It’s got blue coolant because that’s all that was available ready-mixed. It’ll be dropped out and replaced with the right spec stuff when all the hoses get replaced.
When it's all back together get it hot and check your viscous fan.
 
Thor engine. It’s got blue coolant because that’s all that was available ready-mixed. It’ll be dropped out and replaced with the right spec stuff when all the hoses get replaced.
You can get UV dye and a UV torch off ebay. Stick some of that in there and see if you see an UV dye turn up on the dip-stick.
The viscous fan spins easily by hand when cold as I’d expect, i’ll check it hot on Friday.
On startup it will roar. After about a minute or so it'll loosen up and go quiet. As the engine gets hot it should start roaring again as it locks up. Trying to stop it (gently) with a rolled up newspaper should result in shredded paper. If you can stop it with the newspaper then the fan is fecked.

Water pump is another option.
 

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