I think it's past due time I asked for some advice on this. My buddy has a 4-door Golf that just keeps exploding the plastic water necks, one after the other.
Some history:
Some time ago, his car was running great, then it blew a water line on the highway. The head warped, and after some money and grief, it was replaced with a reman, fresh gaskets, and fresh t-belt, and all was fine for a few weeks.
Then the plastic water neck from the head to the radiator just cracked and let loose the coolant while running. This was in winter, so he chalked it up to the bitter cold weakening the plastic and put on another one. It lasted about a month. Since then they've been blowing with regularity. He's hoofing it right now while awaiting yet another plastic waterneck from the parts place.
The pressure cap for the system has been replaced with new, just incase the old one was faulty and not releasing pressure. He doesn't lose coolant until the waternecks crack, then, of course, it all goes byebye.
As you can imagine, by now that plastic piece is replaced with painstaking care. It's not a matter of overtorqueing, or any simple thing like that.
Anybody have any idea what the F is going on with this thing?
That is weird. Only thing I can think of, and it's a long shot: way back when MGs and Triumphs used a weird looking upper coolant hose that looks like a bellows and allows for engine movement. If the wrong hose (like a piece of straight coolant hose) was used then the upper coolant tube would break off of the radiator eventually. In short: is the coolant hose going to the neck the right one?
Where is he buying them? The non OE ones suck horribly. I've had brand new ones leak. I'd get a dealer one (no joke!) before you do anything else.
Jensenman said:
That is weird. Only thing I can think of, and it's a long shot: way back when MGs and Triumphs used a weird looking upper coolant hose that looks like a bellows and allows for engine movement. If the wrong hose (like a piece of straight coolant hose) was used then the upper coolant tube would break off of the radiator eventually. In short: is the coolant hose going to the neck the right one?
Hey, good thought, I'll put that to him. Also, now I'm starting to wonder if his old motormounts are causing the problem. Maybe they let the hose yank against it.
Paul_VR6 said:
Where is he buying them? The non OE ones suck horribly. I've had brand new ones leak. I'd get a dealer one (no joke!) before you do anything else.
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He's getting them from VW Partsplace, in Michigan. He and I have discussed the possibility of it being a crappy part. I thought, "Nah, it only has to hold 15psi, how crappy can it be?" But apparently we're not the only ones having issues with non-OE waternecks. So that's actually good.
I hope it's just a succession of really bad parts. Otherwise the only thing I can think of myself is that there's some sort of restriction in the cooling system causing an overpressure. It may be just at that spot. I need to check with him and see if they've all been Partsplace ones. He's been through about half a dozen.
It's a good thing hippies are nonviolent, or by now he would have taken a shotgun to this Golf.
VW decided to use the A2 platform for its Chinese cars. A lot of the non-OE parts are aftermarket CCS (Cheap Chinese BMW E36). After going through four headlight switches in a year, I just dug out the old one and rebuilt it. And the new front turn signal lens I bought is already letting water leak in. Abysmal quality on a lot of that stuff. But the OE's getting so expensive/rare that sometimes there's no other choice.
There's no rebuilding these waterneck things. I tried. Thought I was gonna be soooo smooth. Nope.
Where's a real good source for non-CCS VW parts? Sounds like bad aftermarket parts is a viable cause to the problem.
To make matters worse, I've been poking around a few parts sites already and I can't find the stupid thing.
What what the vw people i know tell me, pretty much any vw part that is not oem is not good enough quality to be worth using.
I had to get the last one at the dealer, I didn't trust any other sources.
Maybe time to check for headgasket leakage, again.
wrong cap causing too much pressure?
Parts place is the suck in my opinion. Get one from your local dealer.
FindlaySpeedMan wrote:
There's no rebuilding these waterneck things. I tried. Thought I was gonna be soooo smooth. Nope.
Where's a real good source for non-CCS VW parts? Sounds like bad aftermarket parts is a viable cause to the problem.
To make matters worse, I've been poking around a few parts sites already and I can't find the stupid thing.
This is gonna hurt..but the $tealership is often the only choice these days. I suspect if you could find one in the junkyard, even that would be better than the non-OE. But you gotta find one that's not cracked. Is the car 16v or 8v?
These guys stock a lot of OE, sometimes cheaper than the dealer:
http://www.germanautoparts.com/
