Corsa-B.uk - Vauxhall, Opel and Holden Corsa B Owners Club

Hallo all
My 1.4 16v Corsa is using quite a bit of water and there is no physical signs of a leak anywhere.
Where could the problem be?

Thanx
Eric

head gasket at a guess. does your car seem to get rather hot?

No,car is not getting hot at all,the oil is not milky either,had the rad replaced last year and all of a sudden it's doing this.

hmm reason i say is my 1.4 16v started using water for weeks, then it started getting really hot, and talked to a mate who works at vauxhall and he said that the 16v's are prone to blowing the gaskets on cylinder 3 and 4 between cylinder and water gallery resulting in loosing water into the cylinder and the exhaust gasses getting into the water, what you can do is get a sniff test done on the water header tank to see if the gasket has blown. a compression test wont bring up the problem as it only looses water when the cars stopped, as when the engines running the water system gets hot and pressurises and then when the engine stops there is no cylinder pressure so the water pressure is higher so it slowly seeps into the cylinder. as soon as i replaced the head gasket on my 1.4 took me about half a day it ran perfect again.

surely the oil should get milky if the water is leaking through the gasket or does it evaporate?Thanx for the possible answers so far.

thats where i got really confused. no it doesnt, as the oil will only get milky if the water is leaking into an oil gallery but only very slowly so what ever does gets evaporated,

get a sniff test done and that will tell you for certain

yeah i will do that

Do you have white smoke coming from the exhaust? If not it could be something as simple as the expansion tank cap not on correctly/tight enough/ or faulty...

no white smoke,just put a new cap on the tank today so will see if it helps

Let us know how u get on mate

Looks like it is head gasket,going to cosy a fortune to repair it.

Where abouts do u live mate?

Rendlesham woodbridge in Suffolk

do the head gasket yourself you only need a good day working on it and a gasket, you can use the bolts again.