Heater hose chafing through - worth checking.

[93240se]

Had an interesting fault yesterday, temp gauge up to red and Lambda light came on. Loss of coolant caused by top heater hose having chafed through on to dipstick tube. Obviously engine rocks sideways but heater pipe fixed to bulkhead, not a lot of movement but built up over the years. Worth checking condition prior to winter coming along.
Fault code showed Air mass meter, presumably got a bit wet together with everything else on this side of engine. Fault code cleared by disconnecting battery for 2 hours, can't beat simple diagnostic testing ! May consider bending dipstick tube slightly forwards to avoid repeat fault in future.

Regards, Richard.

[Mike_Brace]

Richard you have reminded us about the importance of checking hoses and cables for chaffing or potential chaffing as well as deteriorating. It's one thing I'm very concious of as on lpg conversions I have to be very careful that all pipework for the gas is well secured and protected against chaffing but also flexible to move where needed without fracturing. It is surprising how many older cars need something on them attending to - in fact it seems to be most of them! Have you all checked yours recently, particularly with winter coming on.

Mike

[Clifford Pope]

Been there!
Tiny wear hole at the back of the heater hose, only apparent on the move with the pressure built up and the engine shifted in its mountings.

[Peter D]

The pipe you talk of is tie wrapped to the dipstick tube on mine and no significant chaffing has taken place. You can clear the error codes with disconnecting the battery by using the button on the Diagnostic box by selecting the ECU 2 or 6 ignition on but not running, and pressing the button for at least 5 seconds until the LED comes on then release and press again for at least 5 seconds and LED should cancel then press the button for no more than 3 seconds and the code should be 1-1-1 all clear. However I have had a situation where the code would not clear and as you have done I disconnected the bettery for 10 mins and it cleared. Make sure the radio if off and you have the code and put the clock right. Regards Peter

[93240se]

Thanks for that code clear info Peter, I'll make a note & keep it in the handbook, together with radio code that is already there!
A further tip to avoid this happening again is to cut a short length, say 2" off the old hose, split it longways and put over new hose adjacent to dip stick. Then use a tie wrap to keep it in place.
My local garage uses the "cable management system", a sort of split flexible conduit to wrap over hoses, pipes ,cables etc.
Regards, Richard.