Holts radweld worth bothering with?

anewman

I have just discovered there is a small amount of water beneath my radiator and my coolant level has dropped about a cm or so. I can't find the source of the leak and thought it would be pretty obvious with the engine running but can't see it. The hoses and hose clips etc are good. I suspect it may be somewhere underneath or in part of the core that I can't see.

The car isn't a keeper as I intend to get rid of it within about a year. A new radiator is £30 delivered off ebay so won't break the bank. I guess scrap yard radiators aren't worth bothering with (the last one I tried taking off a car a while back crumbled to bits due to corrosion, lol). Or stick in the bottle of radweld I currently have to hand?

Edit: I've only just thought, perhaps renewing the expansion tank cap caused the leak as this would increase pressure in the system - but I guess if it was going to leak it would have eventually regardless.

NickWarren_2

My Father In Law used this on a shed he was running for a couple of months.

It did the job and he always keeps a spare can in his car just in case now. If you aren't planning on keeping the car for too long i would definately reccomend it.

goldspanners

its worth a bash, it shouldnt do much harm to your engine.

where the skoda going? why you getting rid of it? whats next?

Inactive

goldspanners wrote: »

its worth a bash, it shouldnt do much harm to your engine.

where the skoda going? why you getting rid of it? whats next?

I hope it's another Skoda, anewman wouldn't be the same without a Skoda..

ariba10

As you are not sure where the leak is I would be inclined to give the Radweld a go first.

Pew_Pew_Pew_Lasers!

Don't bother with it unless its an emergency. Get the leak repaired.

daveuns

I used it on my old Peugeot 306 as I wasn't sure how long I was going to keep it, a year and a half later it was still going strong, I know a lot of people don't like to use it, but it did my car no harm.

Volcano

anewman wrote: »

I have just discovered there is a small amount of water beneath my radiator and my coolant level has dropped about a cm or so.

A cm? That's not much really, but the radweld will suffice for a temporary measure. My old car used to take a bottle of the stuff once every 6 months for about 3 years (more a case of me being too lazy to replace the rad) until it was time for the scrappy.

There is a slim chance it could be the hose or the water pump. I remember an old sierra of mine with a failed pump that went from a trickle to a flood (and breakdown) within a week.

anewman

goldspanners wrote: »

where the skoda going? why you getting rid of it? whats next?

Lol, not sure. I think there's a chance it will fail the next MOT on corrosion as the last one required a bit of welding around the front inner wings. I guess I won't be able to beat the rust so not much point paying the test fee for it to fail when I could just scrap it The car was free anyway and I've had a few years out of it.

Still not sure whether to strip this for bits and get the same again - these cars are getting somewhat rare on the roads and the newest of the same model are only a year younger. Relatively perfect low mileage examples that have been garaged by an elderly driver and washed and waxed every weekend and serviced at a dealers on the dot very occasionally popup on ebay - and they rarely go for much over £500 - so if I could get hold of one of those.... I could also get a Felicia which is the newer model and as it's based on the Favorit shares a handful of the same bits (steering rack, engine [in earlier models], gearbox, driveshafts, brake calipers, all the windows, and suspension).

I have also looked into other cars, still in the under £1000 banger category, and tapped some into confused.com to check the affordability of insurance. The most outrageous ones in the list are the Mercedes 190E and BMW 318 (probably unlikely I would get either though, lol). Landrover Discos and Freelanders come up surprisingly cheap on insurance, but doubt I could afford the fuel and repairs etc. Somewhat more sensible ones that have caught my radar so far are Skoda Fabia and Octavia, Toyota Corolla and Avensis, Honda Civic, and Nissan Primera.

My options are open anyway

jeannieblue

Highly recommend this - as a temporary fix before you sell a car on to someone you either don't like or don't know.

If you like your car and intend to keep it - don't use it and get the leak fixed properly.

CHR15

If it's only a small leak and you have a bottle of redweld to hand, its got to be worth a punt (may was well get some use out of those random bottles in the shed).

If it drops aftewards, fleabay