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Turbo using water

edh

New member
I'm posting this in case anybody has any suggestions before we take the head off - headgasket is still the main suspect

The car is a '90 turbo, running approx. 300 bhp. It's using water - somewhere over a litre during a trackday last week.

PH Sportscars have checked it over for me - there's no water in the oil, no oil or hydrocarbons in the water, & the compressions are OK. There's no sign of smoke from the car.

The headgasket was done about 4 years ago - the car has done around 20K since then, but has been used quite hard on sprints & trackdays.

Any suggestions / similar experiences gratefully received

Ed






 
Is there any way of checking that the water is not being lost through the turbo cooling loop? Maybe the water is leaking into the exhaust half of the turbo or even into the induction side - maybe there might be some water collecting in the intercooler??

My only experience with a failed head gasket was on a Nova where the car started to run rough on a long journey with a large cloud of white smoke following me. The car completed the 150 mile journey but as soon as I got home and turned the engine off the cylinders filled with water and the car wouldn't start again. Maybe you're loosing water in this way?
 
sounds hose related to me. I had a similar problem losing water. Not HG, and no sign of leaks. I replaced a couple of hoses and all was well.
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The previous owner had the system pressure tested - all checked out OK

Andrew - I'm not sure I understand the reason you'd put tin foil round a hose - is this to help collect any leaking water?

I'll pick up the car on Monday & have another look at it
 
I hope so - things like this make me very nervous

- and I want to spend my money on more interesting things - like a shiny new MAF kit ;)
 
Found it - I hope

Following Andrew's advice I took it out for a run this afternoon - plenty of 100+ mph + boost

Got home, flipped the bonnet & a saw small cloud of steam coming from a radiator hose - then it started dumping water out

It's the small hose on the n/s top that connects to the header tank. The plastic fitting (944 106 927 00 I think) that screws into the rad looks like it has snapped. The piece that came out almost fell out, & it only has 2½ turns of thread. I'm guessing the rest is still in the rad - am I right - should it be longer? I didn't have time to take things apart to get enough access to try & screw the thing back in again.

The hose clamp had been tightened so tight that the clamping screw had bent - maybe this had fractured the plastic fitting? . If it's broken, it might be a pain getting this out of the radiator, but it must be better than a h/g :)


 
Glad you've tracked it down to something that should be cheap, if not tricky to fix. Just out of interest are you running your engines original standard head gasket on our 300+bhp motor or has it been replaced at some point in it's life?
 
Glad you found it, but for future ref. in the thread, another place to look is the metal pipe above the exhaust manifold, which can corrode and spray a fine mist onto the manifold which almost dissapears and can be very hard to spot. Weak radiator caps (leaking out of the expansion tank overflow, and cracks in the expansion cap are also leak sources).
Tony
 
Scott

The headgasket was done about 4 years (about 20k) ago. Since then the car has been remapped by AmD, has a Lindsey racing intercooler & rebuilt turbo & wastegate fitted. Boost levels aren't increased, just maintained at higher revs. The invoice says that the rebuilt turbo was specified to improve mid range torque ( I don't know how).

There is a fair amount of lag - not very noticeable on the road, but I found it needed a bit of anticipation on the track. I'm tempted to go for the MAF conversion to see if that would help (I guess I might get a little more power as well). Can't spend the money until I know I don't need a headgasket though.

I'll see if I can get hold of the parts later this week & get it sorted - I just hope this is the only leak!
 
Here's the offending item - doesn't seem sensible to make this part out of soft plastic.

New part fitted - £3 from OPC - a bit cheaper than a headgasket

Now I just need to see if the water level stays constant


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