Fellow fiends:
Michael M. ponders the loss of coolant in his A. (Wow, this will be three
postings in one morning--am I busy or what??). Anyway...I've noticed a
similar phenomenon with the B. If you "top it off" to the filler neck, the
next few times I drive it about a bit of coolant will blow out the overflow
pipe on cool down. After a few of these episodes nothing more comes out and
the car runs fine with a steady temp and no trouble cooling down at idle at
the top of exit ramps and such. I think the system has a tolerable upper
limit for coolant volume that takes into account expansion of the fluid with
heating and the need for some compressible vapor space. Topping it off at
the filler neck is probably MORE than this upper limit of volume and the
system will belch it out. As long as the system doesn't perpetually loose
coolant, and the car runs fine, then it seems to me that it ain't broken and
it don't need fixin' y'all.
The alternative to this is to install some sort of coolant recovery system.
Depending upon the year of your B, you may already have one???
WZ
|