MY00 2.0 turbo 101k miles on the clock.
Usual crack on the top plastic cap just where the water inlet pipe enters.
Read up, refused to believe that you couldn't glue, weld or bodge a piece of plastic.
Spent 2 days gluing, welding and bodging, gave up, picking up new radiator tomorrow. :shake:
Just to save others time effort and money let me list the things that will not work with the nylon type plastic they use in these radiators.
Plastic epoxy
Epoxy
Rad Weld (Holts)
Silcone
Hot melt glue
Very high temp hot melt glue
Scoring the surface
Sanding the surface
enlarging the crack to allow sealant behind the crack (and now you have lumps of sealant floating around in your coolant system, fortunately if they are of reasonable size they wont travel through the radiator into the engine or heater matrix. You hope. :icon_frown:
Plastic welding, now you have an uber porous plastic that will filter the coolant as it leaves the car
Basically if you want something more non stick than Teflon then try this stuff. :icon_confused:
Anyway radiator removal is straight forward.
Car up on a ramp or in my case to concrete blocks.
remove undertray
- two bolts at front
- two pop plastic rivets under wheel arches
- two bolts at centre rear
- Push rearwards to disconnect clips at rear
- undertray falls down
Disconnect two wire clips for fans using flat screwdriver blade, wiggling clip and swearing until it disengages
On AT disconnect 8mm expansion pipe on top of radiator and bring with you underneath car
Undo AT pipe clips
Disconnect AT cooling pipes at side of radiator (do not try to disconnect directly from radiator - you won't)
Use 8mm expansion pipe to loop the two exposed AT cooling pipes (This means if someone should start the car accidentally you don't get AT fluid everywhere
Undo Water pipe clips
Either use the stopccock and a pipe to drain the cooling fluid (located on left bottom of radiator) or just pull pipe off and stand back (Guess which I did)
Remove top inlet pipe clip and remove pipe
Pull reservoir pipe out of top of reservoir
remove two mounting screws on slam panel
remove two brackets
Lift radiator out
On a bench or wheely bin whichever is handier remove two bolts for reservoir and remove reservoir
Remove three bolts for metal bottom protector and remove protector
Remove two bolts per fan and remove fans
remove clips on AT pipes and prise pipes off (Very hard with lots of sharp plastic nearby to remove skin and flesh)
Go get new radiator
I'll post reassembly tomorrow
OBW
Usual crack on the top plastic cap just where the water inlet pipe enters.
Read up, refused to believe that you couldn't glue, weld or bodge a piece of plastic.
Spent 2 days gluing, welding and bodging, gave up, picking up new radiator tomorrow. :shake:
Just to save others time effort and money let me list the things that will not work with the nylon type plastic they use in these radiators.
Plastic epoxy
Epoxy
Rad Weld (Holts)
Silcone
Hot melt glue
Very high temp hot melt glue
Scoring the surface
Sanding the surface
enlarging the crack to allow sealant behind the crack (and now you have lumps of sealant floating around in your coolant system, fortunately if they are of reasonable size they wont travel through the radiator into the engine or heater matrix. You hope. :icon_frown:
Plastic welding, now you have an uber porous plastic that will filter the coolant as it leaves the car
Basically if you want something more non stick than Teflon then try this stuff. :icon_confused:
Anyway radiator removal is straight forward.
Car up on a ramp or in my case to concrete blocks.
remove undertray
- two bolts at front
- two pop plastic rivets under wheel arches
- two bolts at centre rear
- Push rearwards to disconnect clips at rear
- undertray falls down
Disconnect two wire clips for fans using flat screwdriver blade, wiggling clip and swearing until it disengages
On AT disconnect 8mm expansion pipe on top of radiator and bring with you underneath car
Undo AT pipe clips
Disconnect AT cooling pipes at side of radiator (do not try to disconnect directly from radiator - you won't)
Use 8mm expansion pipe to loop the two exposed AT cooling pipes (This means if someone should start the car accidentally you don't get AT fluid everywhere
Undo Water pipe clips
Either use the stopccock and a pipe to drain the cooling fluid (located on left bottom of radiator) or just pull pipe off and stand back (Guess which I did)
Remove top inlet pipe clip and remove pipe
Pull reservoir pipe out of top of reservoir
remove two mounting screws on slam panel
remove two brackets
Lift radiator out
On a bench or wheely bin whichever is handier remove two bolts for reservoir and remove reservoir
Remove three bolts for metal bottom protector and remove protector
Remove two bolts per fan and remove fans
remove clips on AT pipes and prise pipes off (Very hard with lots of sharp plastic nearby to remove skin and flesh)
Go get new radiator
I'll post reassembly tomorrow
OBW
