The chances that I've ruined my engine

[SimonTW]

I was driving to work today and got about 5 miles from home and noticed the coolant temp was upto 120 so I pulled over to check for a problem.

Header tank bone dry, rad stone cold and pipes all empty. It was fine last night when I got home as the coolant temp read as normal.

I got some water from a petrol station nearby and poured it into the header tank only to hear it pouring out of the back of the engine. After a quick feel around I noticed one of the rubber hoses has a large split so it's not to much of a major fix.

I just wondered what the likelyhood of my having killed the engine is driving it for up to 5 miles with no coolant?

I had a good trouble free 6 month run with the Nova so a problem had to happen sometime I guess.

[novalew]

worst case scenario is head gasket pal

[mowgli]

what engine??

my sis in law drove her mk2 1300 astra from bicester to hinckley(60miles), and it cut out after every 15 or so minutes, so she left it 10 mins, then carried on... now bear in mind that 2 mechanics had looked at it & said it was most likely the coil... imagine my surprise to find a water pipe hanging off & it bone dry...... connected, re-filled & it ran for 2 more years without any problems...

[SimonTW]

Sorry. C16XE. I have just heard stories of heads warping when boiled dry etc.

[mowgli]

ah.. all you can do is try it. at least a replacement head should be easily obtainable

[paul080803]

Best thing s to repair the leak and chuck some coolant/water in and see. 5 miles is about the time taken to warm up so sounds like you turned it off as soon as it started getting hot, I think it will be ok

[SimonTW]

Well at least I might have a slight glimmer of hope it's not done any damage.

The irony is I wanted to drain the coolant out later today to fit my new 82deg thermostat and refill it with distilled water and add my water wetter. Not quite how I wanted to remove the old coolant though.

Also fairly handy that I've got a complete (albeit split down waiting to be rebuilt) C16XE engine in the garage so at least I should have a pipe to replace the blown water pipe with and a head.

I'll just keep my fingers crossed. I'm presuming a compression test would show up a warped head / gasket failure pretty much instantly?

[mowgli]

i'm at a loss with the distilled water thing.. thats normally for batteries... the inside of an engine will have so many impurities that the use of distilled water is not effective.

fill it with normal water & run it first to check for leaks, then decide.

why are you fitting an astra diesel stat(cos thats what an 82 deg one is)?

[SimonTW]

I'm running distilled as the waters a little hard in our area and reading on various forums seemed recommended for track days. My missus works at a vets so I got a load for free so wanted to give it a try as it seems to get a lot of positive comments when I was reading up.

I'm going with the 82 degree stat as under normal driving conditions the temp is always up around 95-100 at normal driving. Mild spirited driving on a hot day can usually push the temps up to 105. I've been all over the cooling system checking for air pockets and from reading on the net this is just normal for some 16XE engines. I want to go on a track day but I'm concerned at the high running temps so decided to fit the 82 deg stat to just see if I can get the running temp down a little so I can worry a bit less on track.

[mowgli]

they are meant to run that hot..

its slow driving and heat that kills them..

[Will F]

It should be fine mate

[paul080803]

You don't need to lower the running temp on a n/a engine. So long as you have a good condition and efficient cooling system the engine is designed to run at standard temperature with standard thermostat.

[Benn]

^ engine are built to run at a temp. Don't mess with that.

[philip]

I had the water pipe split that went to the inlet.....noticed pretty much straight away, pulled over and got a mate to bring me water down, ended up warping the head, id replace pipe then just see what it does b4 strip head. Is it on a powerbox/mantzel inlet or standard still?

[TonySR]

/\ Cold water and hot engines don't mix!