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Dissapearing Coolant update


njc021073
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Just to let you all know that my problem with dissapearing coolant has been sorted.

When I first got my car a couple of years ago it was loosing half a litre of coolant every 3000 miles. I took it into VW (Vindis Cambridge) on a couple of occasions and they pressure tested it, looked for leaks (residue) and found nothing.

They suggested it was the head gasket on the way out. I take the car to Germany 3 times a year at speed, and this did not seem to increase coolant use, so I was dubious about a gasket problem.

Another strange thing happening at the same time was the the coolant temp gauge was rising normally to 90 degrees, but then it would randomly drop down instantaneously to 0, go back up, drop down and stabalise again at 90. I mentioned this to VW and they said it was probably an independant problem with the gauge or sensor.

Anyway, after lots of research I found a thread about dodgy Passat radiators and mentioned this to VW at the next service (130k). They denied all knowledge of problems with Passat TDI rads, but phoned me back a couple of hours later and said they had found a "very small leak" from the rad.

Since replacing 4000 miles ago (and a high speed trip to Germany) both the coolant loss and temp gauge problem has gone (touch wood).

Can anyone think why a rad leak would affect the temp reading. Could it be to do with air bubbles getting into the system confused.gif

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Passat's have dodgey radiators? Is there any part of the car that isn't dodgey????

The temperature gauge reading may be unrelated, perhaps due to a bad coolant temp sender - another dodgey Passat component! V cheap to fix (at least on the petrol models). A VAG com should find various temperature reading related fault codes in your car's ECU memory if the sender is duff.

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Apparently they go on the offside lower corner - mine did too.

Yes it's a couple of hundred quid but I figured I'd rather get it done than keep worrying about it letting go completely and being more grief.

Waiting for the AA on the M4 at 1am when it's -2 doesn't appeal. No coolant = no heater.

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The other thing to note is that I had an ongoing issue with this for a couple of years, in which time it went in for a couple of services (with the coolant loss being specifically investigated) and they didn't come up with the radiator problem.

Just before the 3rd service I had done I did some research on the net, found out about radiator problems with Passats and told them. They completely denied all knowledge of problems with the radiator and only when I insisted they take a close look at it did they find a problem.

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