Massive coolant leak, engine wont turn over

[justcallmetheman]

Hi new to the forum,

probably not the best introduction but my car isn't turning over and im not good with spanners, novice at best..

my car is an audi a3 1998 1.8 non turbo manual

here is my situation

Two days ago driving back at 2am i hit a fox and ran over it without thinking too much about it ( poor fox obv ), but after 200m of driving the coolant light came on the car, i pulled over to see coolant gushing out from the bottom right of the car (passenger side) towards the front

i did have breakdown cover but no battery on my phone and at 2am no cars about, so i decided to chance a 5mile drive back home in country lanes, the engine temp went to around 120c according to sensor, i got home turned off the car and waited until the following day, car started fine as i drove it on to my drive and then turned it off immediately, now i called the garage who are about 1 mile away to drop off car but it now doesn't turn over... so that's the point up at now.

So does anyone have an idea where the leak could be from, and what damage has been caused, also any mechanics around edenbridge, kent with reasonable rates???

i paid £550 for the car but it's been amazing and dont really want to get rid of it, but dont want to spend too much either.

sorry for the long post and bad intro...

 

[Prawn]

engine seized i'd say

If coolant was gushing out after the fox incident, there will have been none in it for those 5 miles.

Whilst the sensor may have been reading 120, with no coolant in there that could just be radiant heat and the temp in the block could have been WAY higher.

temps like that are not good news. I'd wager that you've killed it by driving home.

 

[justcallmetheman]

but the car did start the following day.. does that make a difference?

 

[willh92]

I know that some cars like Range rovers and stuff of a similar age to yours have a safety feature whereby if coolant levels drop dangerously low they will not start or turn over to save the engine. I have no idea if our model A3's /S3's do this but it could be possible so if I were you I'd be praying it's this and not a more probable engine seize, as Prawn suggested!

Good luck though, hope it works out!

 

[Lavis89]

Chances are you're looking at a seized engine, cheapest way to tell would be to try and turn it over by hand (even a novice shouldn't have problems doing this, if you're not sure what you are doing there are plenty of guides on goggle) if you can't get it to move then your engine is unfortunately dead

 

[justcallmetheman]

Chances are you're looking at a seized engine, cheapest way to tell would be to try and turn it over by hand (even a novice shouldn't have problems doing this, if you're not sure what you are doing there are plenty of guides on goggle) if you can't get it to move then your engine is unfortunately dead

Ok engine isn't seized, my mate was able to get it started, turned out the car does have a safety feature to cut off engine if coolant is too low, so we poured water into the coolant tank while cranking the engine and it fired up, just needs a new radiator. thanks

 

[Clart]

Good work!

Naughty foxes!!!

 

[desertstorm]

It's one thing the engine starting it's another how it will fair in the future. If it had been a diesel you definately would have killed it. The one thing diesels don't like is overheating.

 

[justcallmetheman]

It's one thing the engine starting it's another how it will fair in the future. If it had been a diesel you definately would have killed it. The one thing diesels don't like is overheating.

yeah i can imagine that being true, the highest it went was 120, but stayed between 110-120, he's managed to get me a used rad for £25 and fitting it for free, i owe him big me thinks...

 

[justcallmetheman]

The fox was huge, i reckon it was a man in suit...