Cap shouldn't hiss unless your hoses feel rock hard......

Are you saying you are able to take the cap off when it has overheated? If you can it isn't a head gasket problem as it would have so much pressure in the system it will end up everywhere.

Wrong bloke, Scotty is the one being talked about, the self styled BeCM Doctor, but I know what you mean. If anyone else posted some of the stuff mates of RRTH post, they'd be deleted immediately. He may be an ex-Pat Brit but he's rapidly turning into a Yank, 3 pages on a thread where he's trying to find an electrical fault. Stop playing around on the bloody internet and get your meter out FFS! There was a thread in the Classic forum about garages a few weeks ago. It had nothing to do with Classics other than the fact that some of them had Classics in their huge, industrial warehouse sized, fully equipped, centrally heated, air conditioned, carpeted garages but it didn't get deleted because it allowed the moderators to show off how many cars they'd got.

That's why this forum exists though.......

Poke a bit of thin wire through the pipe going into the header tank, they can clog up especially if the engine has been run with plain water or very little antifreeze.

Morat wrote:

In other news, the EAS has stopped automatically dropping at >50mph and returning when you slow down. It does what you tell it to if you press the EAS Inhibit button but it just stays on the middle mode if you leave it alone.

Huh? That doesn't make a lot of sense. If the Inhibit button is pressed, it will stay where it is and won't drop after 30 seconds at more than 50 mph and rise back up again at more than 30 seconds at under 35 mph, it will just stay at whatever height it was at. It's recommended that you use it when towing so it always stays at the correct height needed to keep the trailer level. Also with it pressed in, you can manually select motorway height which you can't do with it out. With the Inhibit not pressed, you can use the rocker to select access, normal and high but not motorway, with it pressed, you can select them all. If it isn't dropping automatically when it should, then it might be that the Inhibit switch has gone short circuit so the ECU thinks it is in when it isn't (although that should cause the switch light to come on too to show you it's pressed in).

Although the RAVE method usually works, I've my own way of bleeding the air out of the system. Have a go at this:

You can start filling through the top hose connector on the inlet manifold and once it won't take any more there (preferably fill with neat anti-freeze), connect the hose and start filling at the header tank. Rather than rely on the air finding it's way out of the bleed at the top of the radiator, I usually take the pipe off that and leave it open. Sooner or later, coolant will start to dribble out of the nipple on the radiator. When it does, squeeze the top hose, put a finger over the nipple and release the top hose. That will push air out of the nipple but suck coolant in from the header tank as the hose returns to normal shape. Just keep on doing that, squeeze, plug the hole, release, squeeze, plug the hole, release, etc. You'll notice the level going down in the header tank quite quickly and every time you squeeze the top hose you'll hear bubbling in the pipes too. Just keep topping up the header tank until you can squeeze the top hose and not hear any bubbling somewhere in the bowels of the engine.

Then connect the bleed pipe and give the top hose another squeeze. You should see a jet of coolant inside the top of the tank from the bleed. Give it a couple of more goes. Squeeze the top hose, finger over the hole just inside the header tank, release the hose. Keep doing that until you can't hear any bubbling. Then, and only then, start the engine. Let it idle with the header tank cap off and watch for any air bubbles appearing in there. Again, a quick squeeze on the top hose should shift anything still in there. The level will rise as the heat causes the coolant to expand but if it starts overflowing, you've still got air in there somewhere (air expands far more than coolant so any air locks will expand and force the coolant out). Once the stat opens (top hose gets hot), the level may drop, just keep topping it up. If you've got rid of the air, you should see a nice steady stream out of the bleed pipe into the header and the level will stay steady. If the level drops or rises rapidly you've still not got all the air out so switch the engine off and do a bit more squeeze and plug. When you are happy there's no more air in there, put the cap on the header tank.

The car wants to be sitting level or if this isn't possible get it so the front right corner is highest so any air will rise up to the header tank. They can be a bit of a bastard to bleed completely. I bought mine with a blown head gasket, changed that, filled the header tank up just like I would on any other car and took it for a run down the road. I managed about 3 miles before the gauge shot up to the top, the red light came on and there was steam coming out of the header tank overflow. Fortunately, I still had a gallon of water in the boot so let the pressure escape, refilled it and limped home before reading the book and spending a bit more time doing it properly.

Have fun

Still sounds like an air lock to me. If it was head gasket it would pressurise no matter what revs it was doing, it just might take slightly longer at lower revs.

It will be, it runs through the front cover where the timing chain runs. You'd need to worry if it wasn't and at least it stops that one from seizing in.....

I'd have lifted the radiator but that's fairly easy on mine. When I changed it a few years ago I found that the bolt holes for the two bolts at the bottom didn't line up so rather than putting strain on the bottom plastic part of the rad and causing it to leak at the join, I didn't bother fitting them. I figured that with the hoses, gravity, the two rubber mounts at the bottom and the two clips at the top, it was never going to move anywhere. It hasn't in 5 odd years so I don't think it's going to unless I move it myself.

I've got a set similar to this https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/clarke-crows-foot-imperial-wrench-set-10-piece/ that I bought when I needed just one for one particular job. They've sat in the bottom of my toolbox ever since and I only remembered them after I'd spent the best part of half an hour laying under the car looking at the pipe wondering how the hell I was going to get at the pipe union!

4 pin was never fitted on the front, only the 2 pin and only the later 4.6 had the 4 pin on the rear, 4.0 litre and diesel only ever got the 2 pin on both ends. You can fit an 4 pin on the front but it will be noisy as the gears are cut the wrong way. 4 pin is marginally stronger.

While you are in there, have a good look at the two short steel brake pipes, they are known to rust and aren't that easy to see. You'll need a crows foot spanner to undo the top fitting or you'll never get them off.

and following on from my post in the other thread, a floppy water pump would cause insufficient flow and it'll start to leak very shortly too.

Possible but unlikely, clogged radiator or insufficient flow for some reason is more likely.

I put in for 1 room, 1 night (the Saturday night) and it came up at £59. Not sure what you did to get £99......

I just checked, not bad at all, £59 for a standard room. Almost makes me want to break the habit of a lifetime and book it......

Rears do naff all anyway so drilled and grooved would be overkill. Fade is down the the pad compound rather than the discs anyway. Stick with the Delphi ones.

Blimey, that's organised. I don't even book family holidays until there's only a couple of weeks to go.

There's also been a couple of threads on the other forum where people have had problems (one a BeCM and another with a valve block) that a certain item couldn't be the cause as it had been rebuilt by the 'doctor'. After lengthy long distance diagnosis it turned out that it was the parts that had been operated on that were actually faulty. I get the impression he's like most of the other mechanics I've had dealings with in the US. Full of bull but f*cking useless.

Seems the 'specialists' are even worse. We ordered a complete front and rear competition suspension set up for a Volvo P1800 that we were restoring and upgrading (2.5 litre turbo 5 pot, 5 speed manual gearbox, fully independent front and rear end with discs all round and rack and pinion steering, digital dash, etc). £5k sent by bank transfer and never received anything other than lots of excuses. Ended up having to downgrade the spec and buy another scrap P1800 to use as a donor as the old stuff had been thrown away as we weren't going to need it.

Only US spec cars had SAI and downstream O2 sensors, none of the rest of world cars had either of them. US cars also run different firmware in the ECU to bring the CEL on if even the slightest little thing is found wrong whereas you can abuse the others and it still won't come on. I've run mine with intake temperature sensor, O2 sensors, MAF sensor, TPS, knock sensors and just about everything else to see if it will still run without them and still never seen the CEL. On a US car it'll come on if the wind is in the wrong direction......