Coolant leak - your thoughts?

Morning all, had to re-join for some reason no matter what i tried, the forum would not let me log in as TaffMGF.

anyway, my '96 VVC has sprung a coolant leak, and can now empty the expansion tank overnight.

I jacked it up and had a good look, and the leak appears to be starting around the area in the pictures (apologies for the pics, it's not the easiest place to get pics!)

Picture one with the red arrow shows a lip on the engine block that "fills" with water. If i dry it off, I can see water pooling there immediately.

A bit of research shows that the black plastic item arrowed in picture two is the thermostat housing, and further research shows that this can actually be changed in situ without removing the manifold (news that cheered me up no end!)

Anything else that i should be aware of before i dive in? Is this likely to be a new 'stat & housing to solve this problem?

TIA, Taff

Is it me , or is that hose clamp broken below the red arrow in photo 2?

David Aiketgate wrote:

Is it me , or is that hose clamp broken below the red arrow in photo 2?

No, it's the angle of the picture. Although I did just leg it down there to check.

I’ve got the thermostat housing off. Funny job, only three screws and a couple of hose clamps but it’s fiddly. Small, strong hands would be an advantage, unlike my flipping great spades. Oh well.

The housing itself had snapped off its inlet at the water pump end



You can probably figure out which is mine and which is the library picture.

My local factors couldn’t find one listed (that’s his code for ‘I’m busy’) so I’ve ordered one off eBay, along with a couple of new hose clamps and some OAT. Reassembly next week, then!

We (or at least my son is) are in the process of doing the same job on our shared '99 1.8i.

He was struggling so we have popped the manifold off and are changing it for an alloy one.

He has only been at it since July!

talkingcars wrote:

We (or at least my son is) are in the process of doing the same job on our shared '99 1.8i.
He has only been at it since July!

Quicker than most garages then!

I got it back together again, which was fun. Getting the new 'stat in was easy enough, lining up it's mounting bolt was fiddly but doable.
getting in the coolant pipe bracket bolt on the passenger end of the engine? Horrible task, just couldn't get it lined up. I was concious of it being a thread cut into aluminium as well and i really didn't want to damage it.
After two hours of failing to get the bolt started, I gave up, measured up and then drilled a hole in the back wall of the boot, 30mm diameter so I could feed a 12" extension bar through. The bolt went in first time. I accept that it's not ideal to go drilling random holes in your car but I really didn't want to take the manifold off