Cylinder Head - my turn?

The dreaded coolent warning came on the other day. The car is an A3 2.0 TDI (2004). I topped it back up to inbetween the maximum and minimum and it dropped to bang on the minimum line after approx 110 miles (so not a huge water loss, but still significant).

I took it down to the Audi specialist today and after 1 hour on the pressure test it didn't show up any loss of pressure. I spoke to two garages and the general consensus is that I should drive the car around and monitor the coolant loss and oil level (to check whether the oil is going through the head). Quite frankly I do not even want to contemplate the fact that it could be leaking though the block

My question is whether anyone would do anything differently or look out for anything else inparticular (I am aware that several of you will have already been through this experience). I expect to do almost 1000 miles in the coming week so the last thing I need is to risk damaging anything else like the turbo.

I am tempted to change the header tank first as I have never been too happy about that being literally two pieces of plastic glued together, and from what I know of a pressure test a leak in the header tank would not show up.

Quite frankly part of me wants this problem to be the cylinder head so that I can get rid of this horribly weak pourus head which has been bugging me since I found out about it (unfortunately after I purchased the car!!).

Any thoughts are most welcome.

RobinA3 said:

have a look under the filler cap, has that got any signs of mayo?

Click to expand...

There aren't any tell-tail signs under the filler cap so far. Really the level dropped enough for the warning to come on the DIS, and then I topped it up once and it dropped down to the minimum so maybe there hasn't been enough time for the white deposits to build up.

Just a quick update on this issue...

Firsty the problem does seem to have stopped for the moment!! I just drove 150 miles without any real loss of coolant! I am hoping the reason for this is that when the water pump was changed (4,000 miles ago) the mechanic did not properly bleed the system and that accounted for the loss in coolant. However, the coolant does not seem to have been lost at a constant rate - infact I only noticed it start 1,000 miles ago. I will have to continue to monitor this...

To answer a couple of other questions people have asked:

1. I have checked the radiator for signs of leekage and there isnt any. There is a spot in the bottom corner of the radiator which tends to leek on these cars but mine looks fine. My coolant has a red dye in it so I would expect to be able to see a red tinge somewhere on the radiator if it was leeking. Also, it seemed absolutely fine on the pressure test.
2. I have considered using radweld, but as I intend to keep the car I would rather find and fix the issue now if I can. I can appreciate it could be advantagous for some people to prolong the symptoms but in my case I would rather fix it and not potentially damage any other parts of the car whilst waiting to do the permanant (I hope!) fix.
3. It was just the very early (04 - 05) 2.0 TDI's that had the pourus head. However, I would certainly be interested in seeing the VIN range of cars effected if anyone knows it?