Corsa starting motor, coolant loss

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Thu 5 Aug 2004 10:10
Corsa starting motor, coolant loss - Al Civic
A friend has a problem with his 1997, 1.4 Corsa. First problem was that he had been going through a litre of coolant in under a week. Then a week ago the car wouldn?t start, it was taken to a garage, they replaced the starter motor. It ran for a few days, the coolant was topped up with just antifreeze which resulted in a smokey exhaust. Yesterday again the engine would not start and shook the car when it was tried. We suspect that the coolant has found its way into a cylinder filled it over night and when it was started tried to compress the coolant in the cylinder. What damage could be expected if this was what happened?

Cheers Al
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Thu 5 Aug 2004 12:27
Corsa starting motor, coolant loss - Peter D
This is a fairly typical head gasket failure, very poor of the garage not to spot the real problem. If your lucky there may be no damage to the head caused by the high pressure escaping steam although it may still require a skim. Do not use, get it fixed ASAP. Regards Peter
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Thu 5 Aug 2004 13:50
Corsa starting motor, coolant loss - RichardW
For sure the head gasket has gone. What might concern me is that you may have bent a con rod - depending on how far the engine turned before it locked up. I would get the garage to carefully measure the piston positions when they've got the head off to check one of the pistons is not lower than the others.
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RichardW

Is it illogical? It must be Citroen....
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