The wife has just phoned fron work saying that there is steam coming out fron the air vents on our vw passat 1.9 tdi ! any ideas would be much apreciated.
{amendment to subject line to include a brieft summary of question being asked}
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 12/06/2008 at 13:36
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Sounds horribly like a leaking heater matrix. This is expensive to fix as considerable labour is required to take the dashboard out.
As it's Summer, link together the two heater hoses under the bonnet (use a stub of suitable copper pipe from B&Q) and run without the heater. You may need to bleed the air out by pulling your coupling slightly apart as the heater pipes near the engine side bulkhead are at the highest point. One of the VAG fixed pipes has a hole in it, covered by the hose to facilitate this with the plumbing arranged for normal use.
Then fix, sell as is or whatever, according to your pocket and conscience. I would need to like the car a lot to consider carrying out a proper repair.
659.
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Thats a decent get you home type repair, but its not suggested to run the car like that.
The heater matrix is actually part of the cooling system, and depriving the system of the considerable amount of cooling it provides is not a good idea if we get any hot summer days. It also removes the use of the blower motor to aid any cooling should the car begin to overheat in stationery traffic etc.
Suggest getting a couple of quotes to get it repaired properly.
And the garage trade gets a hard time for poor repair quality !
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I 'fixed' a leaky heater matrix on my first bangernomics Omega with a liberal dose of radweld type stuff. this lasted 18 months / 45,000 miles without significantly affecting the efficiency of the cooling system.
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The diesel Passat shares the same radiator as the 2.8 l petrol model, consequently its cooling reserve isn't even remotely threatened by the loss of the heater matrix. The efficiency of the PD diesel engine is such that glowplugs are fitted into the coolant circuit to facilitate warm up on some variants.
I would absolutely not recommend the use of sealer in this installation - the plastic water pump has enough survival problems as it is without the added load of pumping slurry. In a similar vein, don't underestimate the labour involved in dashboard removal. The climate control dictates that its full of flaps and servos - I've seen one in bits and would never contemplate dismantling it.
659.
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Are you it's steam?
I've seen water vapour from vents as a result of air-con. I can't remember the exact circumstances, but I think it was very hot and humid.
Edited by bathtub tom on 12/06/2008 at 15:16
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Just thinking the same thing. My old 306 used to do this if the air-con was turned on on a humid day. You'd get about 3 seconds of white vapour from the vents as the rush of cool air hit.
Terrifying the first time it happened. The only time I'd seen anything like it before was during a small electrical fire on an old Cavalier I owned.
Cheers
DP
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I think the smell of this vapour/steam would indicate if it's A/C or coolant.
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