Re: BREAKDOWNS

Posted by SIMON ARMS on Nov 04, 2011; 10:45pm
URL: http://sundownersadventures.385.s1.nabble.com/BREAKDOWNS-tp4544086p4965493.html

Hi Kit,

I enjoyed your recollection of these breakdowns.
Normally water pumps leak for days proir to letting go and water pump failure is detected on the daily checks when the coolant levels continue to fall. You do have to get under the bus to see where the water is leaking from.
The way this reads there was a lack of fan belts "lack of cooling meant we had to drive at night". Did you run the motor without a belt ? If you did for even a short time this would certainly lead to head gasket failure at the very least.
The water  Vicar poured over you might have been better tipped over the radiator. You could have done what we did on the "Titanic" and put a 20 litre water container on the dash and fed a hose (via the windscreen water pump) to spray water over the front of the radiator, this worked very well and I found having the interior heaters on gave more assistance in emergecies. Of course if I could have convinced the "powers that be" to let me rebuild the motor in London proir to departure this may not have been neccessary.

Regards Simon