thermostat

it´s sad, having a car that´s only usable for short trips in the neighborhood.

Water drops in the exhaust gas (specially with cold engine) are normal.

Try bleeding with opened reservoir. Top up level and let the engine run with opened filler cap until it has reached it´s normal temperature (about 95°C). The heater of the passenger compartment should be turned to max heating position, but the blower must be turned off!
After bleeding there must not appear any more bubbles. But the coolant level may increase during acceleration and even slump during deceleration.

Dear Munir,

welcome, you are first member from Saudi-Arabia! Please feel free to post a picture or two of your car, we'd are very curious about it

Thanks

Bastian

Salaleikum

Thank you! i work in saudi arabia. actually i m from pakistan and a big fan of audi/vw.
i ve posted one picture.it was taken with cell phone camera so not very good resolution.i ll post more.i believe this is the only V8 in this country as told by Audi saudi arabia. they keep a record of all audis here. they take it from license and registration authority.

Great!

I've heard of V8 running in Dubai recently, but haven't seen any when I was there last time.

Do you have any specific problems with sand, dust, salt or heat besides the described ones?

Is your V8 running in Saudi Arabia since the beginning or is it an imported car? Can you tell a bit about the interior (or provide another picture)?

Thank you very much!!

Bastian

Hi Munir,
are you really located close to Yemen? Interesting in which corners of the world a V8 can be spottet.
I worked around Dammam (Ras Tannura) 20 years ago and later in Rawalpindi and Peshawar. Just at the time when the V8 was born. Saudi was a bit boring, just a big sandbox, but in Pakistan I had a nice time.
Keep in touch and take care about the V8

yes i am near saudi-yemen border.do u know the people in pakistan who own V8.actually i am pakistani so next vacation i ll go there in Rawalpindi possibly in Jun/July (to watch FIFA world cup on TV in vacation).i ll be glad to see V8 in Pakistan.it was not easy to maintain Audi in pakistan at that time.In Saudi arabia the company came in mid 90's but in pakistan they landed in 2007.Here in SA people keep expensive cars just to show (i may be wrong)but in Pakistan i have met some people who have real love with cars and they keep this love for years e.g. i have not seen a single VW beetle (older one) in SA but u ll find 100's in Rawalpindi only.

Hi Bastien,
My car came in saudi arabia in oct 2005. one of my friend imported it from Japan.sand, dust and heat are really big problems here.on ecan easily ruin his ride if not aware of these things. driving on high speed through a sand storm very badly damages the front of cars especially paint, headlight glass and plastic work on bumper etc.if you r loosing little coolant in desert heat the engine may quickly heat up. once i was going to Riyadh and i faced a sand storm.despite of the fact i slowed to below 40kph, there was damage to paint work on front bumper.i ll soon post pictures of interior which is satisfactorily nice.
thanks for your intrest.

walaikum Salam

Hello all.
rather than continue my enquiries in the general section, i thought it might be appropriate to continue here in related threads.

recap.
My car has taken to over heating. After initially running with a fairly low temp for a while, it then went to high temp. The initial sign of something wrong was a low coolant level- dashboard diagnostic warning, confirmed visually at the expansion tank. It drops well below bottom level of the tank, but fluid happily returns to the tank when pressure is released.

A compression check shows all cylinders being relatively healthy. No remarkably low readings.

I need to check the thermostat. Unfortunately, the 2 screws are very tight. The torx tool I was using deformed. So I need a more direct route to those screws, and the radiator must come out.
I've not had a type44 apart before, so some pointers would be appreciated.
I want the rad out, clear access to the 2 bolts for the thermostat, and any possible repairs if the screws do pull material out with them.
It's a shame really- the hoses were replaced (prior to my owning it) at the same time as the cambelt. But the thermostat was kept. Doh!

any helpful documents/photos showing what needs to come apart would be great.

HI,

you still didn't tell how high the temprature went - probably the problem is a pressure problem due to a broken/sticky valve on top of the expansion tank. That's also not so quite unusual...

I have parts of an English repair manual/self study program I can send to you as an intermediate help (email address required). I'll ask at the US mailing list, probably somebody has the complete manual.

Bastian

I knew i forgot something.

I don't recall the actual temp that it got to, but it was about 2/3 full scale, started rising rapidly, while at a constant road speed of 70ish.

It's done it at low speed, high speed, 50ish. But it also went several trips without a problem. I'm fairly confident the thermostat will be involved, what with the cool running temp during the cold winter months.

Hi,

the thermostat gets stuck at a certain position, usually. Commonly, it gets stuck in open position, leading to an engine staying too cold during winter months or requiring too much time to become warm.

I've never heard of a thermostat suddenly closing during driving and staying there... but I've had the same symptom as you describe it once in winter, when I had too less G12+ in the cooling circuit, resulting in a frozen radiator. This in turn resulted in >110°C and, consequently, in a blow off of the overload pressure.

All this still sounds more like a clogged radiator to me, but give the thermostat a try.

Bastian

Once I have the rad off, the thermostat is coming out. It's peanuts cost wise, but a major pain if it needs doing later. Especially considering that the bolts are so well seized, that it is likely some serious effort is required to get them out.

I much prefer to do these things properly, once, when time and funds permit.

I just need to get the front to pieces.

Hi,

remove the front bumper (some tricky screws, somewhat more complicated than on a usual Typ 44, unfortunately), remove the head lamps, the lock carrier (guess it's called so) and finally you can move the AC radiator downwards and remove the coolant radiator.

There may be easier ways to accomplish a removement of the whole front, but I'm not aware of one. Just take care that the AC circuit remains closed!

You said the campbelt has already been changed - do you mean the engine timing belt or just the flat belt for the auxillery aggregates? If the engine timing belt is still the first one, you should change it asap, as Tim also proposed.

Regards

Bastian