Bad news and more bad news!

Anything about BXs
Post Reply
User avatar
Vanny
Merseyside resident
Posts: 3581
Joined: Tue May 17, 2005 11:48 pm
Location: BXProject
My Cars: BX 16v Ph2 - Jazz
BX 16v Ph2 - XPO
x 79
Contact:

Bad news and more bad news!

Post by Vanny »

Bad News 1

While i was on holiday my mums AX got broken into, the wanna be thieves smashed through the rear window to get into the boot, then not realising the parcel shelf could be very easily removed duely ripped the tailgate off the car! And smashed it in half! To find my sisters smelly gym kit. Car was parked out side a nursing home in a rather nice area (on the golf course that the Open was held at!). Worst bit is that i had a donor car in liverpool with a tailgate in the same colour! Parents didnt bother to tell me and claimed on the insurance, silly sods!

Bad news 2

MrWrays car has died (this is billys old 1.7na tzd), engine is a total loss having been driven for quite some time with minimal water. It's seized and wont turn over at all! It's not all bad, we've decided too much time and effort has been spent on it so far so it will live again!

Bad news 3

I've killed my BX :(
The story goes that i was towing the donor AX from Liverpool to my parents house, and left all the coolant water in Liverpool! My car made it 11 miles through liverpool city centre, through the tunnel and down the motorway before giving up just 5 miles from home at the top of the slip road! Problem was due to total catastrophic failure of the radiator (a copper cored Pug 309 Dturbo rad) which now sports three of more LARGE holes int he bottom of the rad!

Once i got all the cars back home, i refilled the water into the rad (which instantly started pooring out) and a jump start saw the car start pretty much on the button wihtout too much issue.

Question time
Given how the car started up pretty much fine, but remembering 11miles towing with no water and the guage at 110, also remembering a head change only 3500 miles ago AND payen multi layer gaskets, whats the likely damage to the engine?

The engine side wiring loom will likely need replacing as many of the wires have become very brittle, and i need to get it a compression test, but any other sugestions?

I might add i put every drop of liquid into the rad/engine that i could find to stem the heat change, dont know if it was a good idea or not but the 6 litres of cola that went in only cost 97p in total

And after 2000 faultless miles in france (its even stopped loosing so much oil) it could only make 11miles of a 20 mile trip to the parents!
User avatar
mnde
Meteor Man
Posts: 1453
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2005 5:10 pm
Location: Aldershot, Hants
My Cars: 2007 Citroen Xsara Picasso 1.6 16V VTX
1982 Citroen GSA Spécial Estate - gone to a new home
1991 Citroen BX16 TGS Meteor - still out there somewhere!

Post by mnde »

Sorry to hear your bad news Vanny :(

T'was great to meet you (both) at Le Mans!! What a coincidence! :D Did you enjoy your tours round the circuit? Absolutely great fun. What a sod to come back to all this?

I also have bad news chaps:

On Tuesday I was given a month's redundancy notice by my company :( ... so I'm currently on 'gardening leave' while looking for a new job! I have a meeting with the boss on Tuesday to discuss alternative employment within the company, but I'm not holding out much hope. My part-time colleague is also being made redundant... our work's being given to monkeys in Manila. :x I'm hoping to slash my travel costs though, because it was very expensive driving 50 miles a day in't petrol BX / GSA - and hoping to get paid more!

Bummer about the AX, thieving scum! :evil: and I hope the BX turns out to be okay!

Cheers,

Mark.
User avatar
DavidRutherford
BX Digit man!
Posts: 2706
Joined: Wed May 18, 2005 5:07 pm
Location: Placing comments on YouTube.

Re: Bad news and more bad news!

Post by DavidRutherford »

Vanny wrote:While i was on holiday my mums AX got broken into,
What an utter arse. I hope the perpetrators burn in hell. Finding that your car's been broken into is really horrible news. Sorry to hear that it's happened, especially to your parents (who are lovely and very accommodating)
Vanny wrote: but the 6 litres of cola that went in only cost 97p in total
Ah. That's bad news. Cola is highly acidic, and will probably have been dissolving the aluminium of the head the whole time it was in there. I trust it's been flushed several times since then!

The only way to tell if there's been head / head gasket / block damage is to drive it and see what the car does. You may be lucky and find that the engine is fine, but then you may find the head has warped heavily and the gasket is fubar. How lucky do you feel? (sorry, that's probably not an ideal thing to say given recent luck!)

Get a new/good rad, fill up with water and drive the car... see what happens. watch the temperature gauge like a hawk. Hope it's ok. If the engine went no higher than 110 you may have gotten away with it.
this might be a signature
User avatar
docchevron
The Immoderate half of the admin team
Posts: 7524
Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2006 7:03 pm
Location: A Bucket of Fish
x 7
Contact:

Post by docchevron »

The citroen gods have not been smiling on you recentlry have they?

When my car was N/A it seized sat in traffic (rad fan relay failed), the head gasket survived and it wasn't the metal jobby so you might be lucky (you certainly deserve some) but as David said, you aint gona know till you got a hole free rad in it.

Best of luck dude
Cheers
Chris G
Smokes lots, because enough's enough already!

Far too many BX's, a bus, an ambulance a few trucks, not enough time and never enough cash...
Stewart (oily!)
1K Away
Posts: 1604
Joined: Wed May 18, 2005 6:23 pm
Location: North Wales

Post by Stewart (oily!) »

And it was running so well too, perhaps you should give up your other hobby of shooting robins whilst sitting under a ladder smashing mirrors.
Stewart
TZD 19 TD one of the few
Xantia Td estate, going soft
User avatar
stuart_hedges
1K Away
Posts: 1679
Joined: Mon Oct 03, 2005 10:35 am
Location: Surrey

Post by stuart_hedges »

Good luck with the job hunt Mark. I've been out of work and it's a lot of no fun; hope you find something else within the month you have. Keep us informed.
User avatar
mnde
Meteor Man
Posts: 1453
Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2005 5:10 pm
Location: Aldershot, Hants
My Cars: 2007 Citroen Xsara Picasso 1.6 16V VTX
1982 Citroen GSA Spécial Estate - gone to a new home
1991 Citroen BX16 TGS Meteor - still out there somewhere!

Post by mnde »

Thanks Stu :-)

Mark.
Post Reply