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Well, that was a fun night last night... I was headed back to my parents joint near lancefield to see my sister who's down from "the snow" for a couple of days.
We were cruisin on the calder bypass of kyneton when we heard some strange noises like i'd run over some debree on the road, only there was no movement in the car, just the noise... so i pulled over to inspect, everything seemed fine except that the engine sounded different. Lift the bonnet, got the mobile out for some light (my torch wasn't in the car), the alternator fan belt was on the way out... I thought no worries, i'll just drive it home the 25km or so and if it destroys itself i've got the second belt to run the water pump... good in theory...
One Km down the road, up to speed and yep, there goes the alternator belt... no worries... another couple of hundred metres and the temp gauge is going nuts, so i pull over and there's lots of steam.
Got the mobile out again, the shreaded belt wrapped itself in the water pully effectively stopping the water pump from operating, it also ripped out the dipstick which is somewhere after the second kyneton exit from benders... Thought i'd take the risk and check the water, even though it was hot cos there was alot of water around that shouldn't have been... Not a lot of water present, so it downed a litre and lost a litre out from under the car... Called dad who then came and towed me home.

After dinner i went out to assess the damage, we had to drive the car back to benders that night. Pulled the radiator out and there was a huge split from the inlet hose to half way down the radiator, like there was an explosion that ripped out the side of it... At first i thought the belt had grabbed the pipe and ripped it but that was not physically possible due to the thermo fan and that there was no folding evident.

Lucky my sister's L is still being fixed up after her prang, so i stole her radiator and we were off again... the car runs cooler now, i thought it was the engine (it's a pick a part job that's dieing) but turns out to be the radiator that was the cooling problem.

Has anyone had a radiator blow out the same as i've described? I'll try and get pics up in the next couple of weeks, we didn't have our digi on us so it'll have to be done another day.

So ruby scoo is back up and running... and cooler than before... I hope not to have this problem again...

Cheers

That's a great story mate, pain in the butt though i guess... Its a pretty important part of the car and doesn't just die like many components, but goes slowly, so its hard to determine and often an area overlooked as u said!

Great to hear your road bound again.

Smokey.

Thanks Smokey,

I was thinking about it the other day, the original engine was seriously cooked and is now in bits on the shed floor never to start again (it has cracked cylinders)... the engine has been changed but not the radiator... i'm now thinking that this was the beginning of the end for the old radiator... Now we're going to see if we can replace the reservoir end to use in my sister's L from her old radiator (core's damaged)...