citroen c5 estate - citroen c5 head gasket

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Wed 24 Aug 2011 10:04
citroen c5 estate - citroen c5 head gasket - robg58

Just picked up a cheap C5 estate which appears to have a leaking head gasket,drove it 450 miles home without a problem though.The whole top end had a complete rebuild only 11000 miles ago at a cost of £2353 (prior to me getting it )and I'm a bit reluctant to do the head again , it uses very little water but you can see the gasses bubbling in the expansion bottle.

Do products like K seal work and if they do how long do they work for and do they cause any damage to the engine if they don't work and you have to do the head again.

Or is there another route to fixing it as money is extremely tight at the moment.

Thanks

Rob

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Wed 24 Aug 2011 13:39
citroen c5 estate - citroen c5 head gasket - Peter.N.

Hi Rob

It might help if we knew what engine it was but I suspect its a diesel. If you leave the filler cap loose so that its not sealing it will allow the gasses to escape and if the leak isn't to bad should prevent water loss.

The only downside to that is it will reduce the boiling point of the coolant, but as long as you dont thrash it, it shouldn't be a problem.

Peter

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Wed 24 Aug 2011 16:08
citroen c5 estate - citroen c5 head gasket - robg58

Thanks Peter ,

It's a 51/02 plate 2L diesel , it does not over heat and I drove it 450 miles almost non stop and rarely below 80 and the temperature guage didn't even move from just below centre .It has done 143k miles but it had the top end rebuilt due to the crank pulley falling to bits which subsequently caused the timing to jump a notch or 2 and knacker the valves.

It's not using much water only about a pint over about 750 miles that's why I wondered if it was not too far gone that it could not be fixed even for a short period (as I hope to be a bit better off in a couple of months and more able to fork out for a head gasket job)with something like Kseal or any other recommended head gasket repair additive, but only really worth doing if it subsequently doesn't knacker any future repairs that would need doing.As someone told me that if you use it that was the engine knackered as you could not skim the head after using one of these compounds.

There is no smoke coming out the exhaust.

Rob

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Wed 24 Aug 2011 21:13
citroen c5 estate - citroen c5 head gasket - track
The best of them is from my experience is the BARS block seal, commonly reffered to as a dog sh.. due to its appearance. Another little trick would be drill a couple of 6mm holes in the thermo stat or cut the centre out of it completely. This will allow the coolant to circulate all the time so no air builds up in the cylinder head. Downside is that it takes longer to warm the car up. Sometimes a quick nip up of the head bolts will seal the blow as well.

I should point out that none of these is in anyway a replacement of just having the head gasket done before it gets worse. May seem expensive now but price an engine and engine change to put it into context.
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Thu 10 Jul 2014 13:11
citroen c5 estate - citroen c5 head gasket - Ged.
I live in New Zealand, had a Nissan Laurel Diesel, a Toyota Corolla, a Toyota V6 Camary, and I use a product called SealWell, it is made in America. Google it and you will read about it. But their is many of them on the market now and since I started in the motor trade as a mechanic they now just seem to work. The man I buy it from say the Car Salesman Robbers buy it by the carton, and it works. If it does not then you have no hope. But so far it has always worked. Good luck. New Zealand Mechanic with 46 years of experience.
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