New radiator

Smaller, lighter, warmer.

My old radiator finally succombed to its fox-induced injuries; for the past couple of weeks I've needed to top the water up every day.

James fitted me a new Caterham ali radiator on Tuesday. It's smaller (and lighter!) than the old one, and its slightly reduced capacity seems to be helping to keep the water temperature just a little higher (which is a good thing - it now runs at about 80 deg C).

I don't want to blow another head gasket so I checked the water level before leaving for work this morning. I was pretty peeved to find the expansion tank empty. There were no obvious pools of water under the car, so I topped it up. I don't want to jump to conclusions yet, but it seems as though the system wasn't filled and bled properly once the new rad had been fitted.

I checked the water level again at lunch time, and the level seemed to have gone down only a fraction. I will check again before I go into work tomorrow. Fingers crossed that no lasting damage was done yesterday.



This page is http://www.strangely.org/diary/200207/Newradiator.html. It was first published on Thursday 18 July, 2002 and last updated on Tuesday 11 January, 2005.