Car has now been christened!

[Frosty20112]

Saturday morning shenanigans.

 

I am so glad that I managed to christen the car this quickly with a tow. Now, I don't need to wonder when it will happen!

Appears to be a radiator hose blowing off as a minute after parking it, it dumped the entire coolant reservoir all over the parking bay in a matter of seconds.

It is now on its way to Dads garage. Will post pics/results after we diagnose it over the long weekend.

[LeeM]

Dontcha just love old cars? 🙄

 Bummer mate, though it is a part of owning these old things sometimes.

[TwoHeadsTas]

Wow, at first I thought you were bragging about christening it in another way.......😋

Bugger, the joys of old cars, enjoy working out what has happened

[brian in buddina]

Which hose?

[Frosty20112]

Not sure yet. Had a quick look when it happened and nothing was loose/missing from the top/accessible part of the engine bay.

Will be starting on it Thursday morning. I will be having a notepad with me as I suspect when I start inspecting the front end, there will be little bits and pieces not up to scratch that I will need to order in addition to whatever actually went wrong.

Super excited to have a reason to pull it apart and familiarise myself with the car. Lucky for me, I have some time up my sleeve due to COVID and an understanding wife. Should be a blast!

[Timm]

If you don't find any loose/busted hoses, it may have come from the overflow on the expansion tank. Typical causes are air in the system, overheating, weak expansion tank cap, or a bad head gasket. If it did it shortly after parking, it could be your fans aren't running and it overheats when stationary (no airflow). Let us know what you find and we can help you narrow down on the issue.

[Frosty20112]

Hey guys,

Under the car now. I may be a little biased here but shouldn't the below hole have something in it? Picture taken of drivers side.

I have read that sometimes radiators have random holes that require plugging. Not sure if it's one of those cases or there is meant to be a hose there. Will continue googling.

 

[Frosty20112]

Ok, turns out that hole means nothing.

Also, the car has now christened me in a lovely green hue. I only wish there was someone else there to laugh at me except myself. Silly me thought the system was empty so I unscrewed the drain plug without a pan. 

So, good news and bad news. Filled the system up with water and ran the car. No leaks. Super frustrating because now I have a car that will work, but I'm not sure why! I guess this is where I need to just accept that it works and be grateful haha.

Timm - Seems like you may have been spot on with the overflow as I ran the system and revved it a bit with the refill cap off and a good amount of water pushed out the top. After I put the cap back on and ran the system again, little drops were coming out of the overflow pipe at the bottom. I could see how a build up of air pressure could force a heap of coolant out of there. Amazes me how quickly it leaked though given the diamater of the overflow tube. Your solution makes even more sense given the radiator still had at least a couple of litres in it.

With any luck, it will spew out again in a carpark and this time I will be quick enough to jump under it immediately to find the point of failure.

Just like with any issue, checking out this one has led me to a few other bits and pieces I need to fix. Not to mention some 'wtf did they do that for' moments hah. Super excited.

[P-Kay]

Could it be as simple as a new cap required?

[Timm]

You can put a longer hose on the overflow and route it into a bottle, that way you know exactly when and how much is coming out.

Also, you need to bleed the air out of the system after you've topped it up. There's a bleed screw on the coolant neck at the front of the head. Running it with the cap off won't get all the air out of the block.

 

[jakroo]

48 minutes ago, Timm said:

You can put a longer hose on the overflow and route it into a bottle, that way you know exactly when and how much is coming out.

Also, you need to bleed the air out of the system after you've topped it up. There's a bleed screw on the coolant neck at the front of the head. Running it with the cap off won't get all the air out of the block.

 

@Dreamr could this assist you in your quest???

[Dreamr]

19 minutes ago, jakroo said:

@Dreamr could this assist you in your quest???

Yeah ... thanks mate!!

You will need to bleed the system of air after its been emptied. I’m currently struggling with this on my sons 944.

You need to park the car on a semi steep incline or put the front wheels on ramps, turn on the heater and make sure its on hot. This allows the water to circulate through the entire system.
 

Then you'll need to fill the reservoir with coolant, open the coolant bleed screw and blow into the reservoir to force the air lock out. Another is to put on a radiator pressure tester to force it out. Then close the bleed screw when water is a constant out of it.

Some have had success without doing anything but run the car and it happens by itself, and others like me are having all sorts of trouble getting the air out. I’ve tried numerous ways without success.

There is a ton of info about it on the net. Just google “bleed 944 cooling system” ..

[Frosty20112]

Thanks guys! I really appreciate the assistance here with all the troubleshooting. It helped so much.

Successfully bled the system using the bleed screw yesterday. Chose not to give mouth to mouth hah. I think a good investment will be the pressure tester. It will go onto the list. Reading stories of people sitting there for 40mins waiting for the air to push out. Yep, they aren't wrong. I was there for over an hour.

Timm - Definitely going to rig your coolant catcher suggestion up! Ingenious. 

[Frosty20112]

On this episode of Ghost hunters, we try to find the ghost leaving fluro green ectoplasm everywhere! Again...

Car ran perfectly all day running errands with more than 1 mountainside trip (Dad lives in a valley so no matter what we do, we have to drive up and down a mountain, poor us 😁). Then, after giving it some on the final stretch (no more than usual) then down the driveway where we eventually turned it off. Queue coolant overflow pipe. Did the exact same motions 3 other times that day and all was well.

We now have confirmation that the coolant is 100% coming from the overflow pipe.

@P-Kay I checked the cap after you mentioned it and thought yep no problems it looks brand new. And, it was. After more and more (and more) reading and learning how the system works (mechanical novice) I noticed something was amiss after having a pretty nice little 'Aha' moment followed quickly by a 'derr, you aren't too bright are you Blake' moment. The radiator cap may be new but it is underrated to Porsche spec. It is only a 90kpa/13psi cap!

The Porsche part is 100kpa/14.5psi and people are recommending all the way up to 145kpa/21psi for later models. I think I'm going to start with 110kpa/16psi as I have read a few people going this size and it sounds like going higher is only going to highlight other weak points in the system.

I will also be looking for a new bleed screw for the head. I only wish I had video for why.

Factual retelling;

Me - Tightening bleed screw

Dad - Don't tighten it too....

Car - Old Faithful

After several moments of histerical laughter after beelining it to the ignition, the next comment 'oh crap, the head!' was less funny. Luckily, Dad has pretty much every tool you could imagine, if you can find it in the shed. We did a compression test on all the cylinders and we are running at ~175psi per cylinder with little variation, woohoo! No coolant on the plugs either. Head is safe.

Replacing cap and screw on Sunday with any luck.

To be continued...

[P-Kay]

Something else to consider for 'preventative maintenance' is to have the radiator flushed. To me, it sounds like my youthful old falcon days whereby all it took was a couple of blocked veins and similar experiences to your current episodes.

All the besty mate  

[firstone]

Tell me about the ol falcon 6 overheating. 😥

 

[P-Kay]

11 minutes ago, firstone said:

ol falcon

....ahhhh.....good times indeed

[Frosty20112]

Morning all,

Final update? Haha, yeah right... We do seem to be good to go though!

Cap replaced with 15psi cap. Bleed screw temporarily replaced until part comes in the mail from Auto Atlanta. Bought a M8 x 1.0 from bolt shop and cut it down. Made sure it wasn't high tensile. Seems to work well for the time being.

Something we didn't quite put together initially because we thought 'nah that's stupid, no way that was done that way' was that the second time the coolant overflow problem occurred, the aftermarket temp gauge stopped working about 20 minutes beforehand. We knew we had to rectify that problem but assumed it was not relevant to the fans turning on because why would power to the gauge have anything to do with the fans turning on?!? It sounds incredibly stupid, but maybe there is a reason for it? It was only apparent to us that the gauge should be looked at more urgently after we filled the system up again and the fans never turned on and spewed coolant out again. I think I dropped 8 f-bombs in the space of 12 seconds, a new record for me.

Ok, guess we are checking that temp gauge now... After tearing the centre console out and doing a continuity test on the line, no faults found. Plugged it back in and low and behold, it turns on. Connection must've been bumped. Turned the ignition on and got a massive voltage drop. Fans turned on...

Fans were also set to come on at 94 degrees. I have now reduced this down to 85 degrees and will further fine tune it after doing more reading.

We are replacing the thermostat for good measure too and I will be ordering a new set of hoses soon because the existing ones appear to be a little old. Lindsey racing has some pretty blue ones that I think I'll be ordering alongside some pretty blue ignition leads considering I tore one of them getting them out when doing my compression testing. And yes, my car is also blue. If anyone has dealt with Lindsey racing, I'd love to hear from you to know if I'm making a mistake with them and should be going elsewhere.

@P-Kay Will definitely have someone flush it, thanks for the idea. Hopefully that will prevent me from having to get a radiator anytime soon.

To surmise, the cap seems to have caused the first event with the powerless temp gauge causing the second and third event. Car has now been put back together and is working although we have yet to take it on a proper run.

To prevent this issue from ever happening again due to a loose connection, Dad had a redundancy he had previously used on my brothers car (the same brother responsible for making it difficult to find tools in the garage. I blamed him for a missing 10mm for years. Turns out I had the 10mm the whole time in that one case. He still brings it up.). The redundancy is another temp sensor installed inside the tube at the head connected to an independent analogue switch to turn the fans on when the temp hits the failsafe. Will take photos once it is installed. Itty bitty system that can be hidden quite nicely.

Apologies for the wall of text. I have found too many half finished forum posts on the web saying "I have a problem!" followed by "Nevermind, fixed it" with little to no explanation as to how or the posts just stop with no resolution and it frustrates me to no end. I'm trying not to be 'that guy'.

 

Edit : Something I forgot to add. Required disclaimer, don't try this at home. The mouth to mouth trick to bleed the system worked really well and saved an incredible amount of time.

[brian in buddina]

On 2 October 2020 at 19:30, Timm said:

You can put a longer hose on the overflow and route it into a bottle, that way you know exactly when and how much is coming out.

Also, you need to bleed the air out of the system after you've topped it up. There's a bleed screw on the coolant neck at the front of the head. Running it with the cap off won't get all the air out of the block.

 

@Timm

have you made up anything to screw into the bleed nipple?

I read somewhere about getting a grease nipple, with the same thread as the bleed nipple.

Drill out the ball bearing & spring. 

Then you have a positive hose connection & no wastage. 

Having said all this, its on my list of things to do. 

 

 

Frosti

On some of the 944 Facebook forums the has been less than desirable reports about LR. Just a word of caution. 

As you are finding out, lots of problems are due to previous owners using non porsche spec parts, for example the coolant tank cap, wrong temperature to thermostats etc etc....

Best of luck getting things back on the road.

These cars will make you a better person!

Hope to meet up somewhere on a future drive. 

[Frosty20112]

Thanks Brian,

I will conduct a bit more due diligence before ordering my parts from LR.

Car is now good to go with a fan override switch installed. Changed tact a little due to the additional temp sensor missing a component. It was quite straight forward to install. We piggy backed off the existing fan power with a double adapter, installed a relay under the hood, and ran into a new switch in the centre console.

We also determined that the battery is buggered so will replace that. Alternator working as intended.

Some of the shenanigans during the install;

We tested continuity in the system as you do, without realising one of the cables was still connected to the whole roll of cable lol. Far too long was wasted trying to figure that one out. 

2, yes 2 relays turned out to be faulty. We thought we broke something but third time was the charm with the relays. The 2 that didn't work were brand new.

We utilised existing power from the rear wiper switch as I have done the rear wiper delete so the wiring was now redundant. Massive weight reduction removing that motor. I'm sure it weighed a full kilo. Apparently my want to reduce weight further by removing the left over cabling was overkill. Every gram counts, right? hah.

Tips for trying to get cabling through the firewall - Coat hanger, torch, and a few months of yoga. I feel removing the dash and centre console would have been less work in the end. Huge pain given the limited space to move around. The HVAC takes up so much room.

You're right about the car making me a better person @brian in buddina. Well, at least it is making me less silly by showing me quite quickly just how silly I am. Very enjoyable conducting all the trouble shooting. Could explain why I enjoy computer programming as it is 5% writing code and 95% figuring out why it doesn't work.

Given the ghosts in the system that are causing the temp gauge/fan controller to lose power and a few other little annoyances, when the time comes, I will rewire most of the car to meet my standards.

Onto the next task!