Stone cold bottom rad hose...

[colifeashots]

After doing an oil cooler job and several flushes of the water system on my v5, I cant seem to get any heat in the bottom hose. I`ve followed methods of bleeding out the air at the matrix hose,but is this normal????

Temp never goes over 90 degrees so no problems with overheating.
first thought is to strip out and replace thermostat and housing- if I can find the time to dig way down deep at the back where its roumoured to be.

Any help on this nuisance would be great
Coli.

[gresty]

Is the bottom hose cold after a little blast out on the road? If you are running the engine at tickover without any load on the engine the bottom hose will appear to be cold (or cool). Give the car a 10 or 15 min run and recheck.

[colifeashots]

Seems to be the case even after a 20 mile run, half of that on motorway.
Odd, cos the temp rises to 90 normally and the heater works ok.
I still think I`ll take an afternoon doing the stat just in case any thing is rotting.
Last I spoke to john at bedrockveedubs he said the biggest failure in v engines was low coolant strength whitch rots gaskets etc. I suspect this is where the slow leak is anyway, ( someplace to put a stat!!)

Ta,
Coli.

[JulianHicks]

I think I'm right in saying that the water temp. on the dash is measured off the heating circuit and not the main coolant circuit.

The heater circuit is a loop off the back of the engine; the radiator (i.e. cooling circuit) is a loop off the front!

In winter, the thermostat will not open quickly, so the bottom of the front circuit will stay cool because the water, by design, is not meant to be circulating. The rear heating circuit should reach normal (90 degrees) quite quickly.

Julian

[colifeashots]

Thanks for that, makes sense to me.
Cars running like a sweety.
Still to do that stat job and put that niggling water leak to bed.


Coli