Losing water.

[chilly]

Hi, i'm new to this forum and have not tried searching the topic, so here goes.

i'm loosing quite a bit of water from my rad, the expansion vessel always seems to be at the same level but the rad itself looses quite a bit ( i recently did a 700 mile round trip and put in nearly 2 litres of water)
I'm possitive that i don't have a leak and there does'nt appear to be any water on the oil cap, however, my car seems quite smokey when driving and idling, is this normal? the car has done 115k

i should have said also that the car has been converted to run on LPG, but it does the same on petrol.
any help would be appreciated

 

[chapsdeva]

What color is your smoke? If it is white, then that is steam and you more than likely have a blown head gasket. Check your oil and see if it is foamy. Also look for oil in your coolant. My 93 Sable blew a head gasket and she smoked like a steam engine.

 

[chilly]

Chapsdeva, it does seem to be white but its been like it for ages,
when i bought it it was worse and the garage said that there might be water in the petrol! even tho it was the same on lpg

i took it back and they did something to it?? and it seemed a lot better.
what i don t understand is why it looses water from the the rad when there is water in the expansion? would nt it run back into the rad or am i a mile off?

 

[BrooklynBay]

Welcome to this forum! You should connect a cooling system pressure tester to it.

 

[my98nnj]

Check the rad cap and the hose going to the tank. Your cooling system should push and pull liquid from the tank as the system expands and contracts. Make sure you have the correct cap.

The smoke your seeing doesn't seem good either.

 

[Cobraguy]

Check the rad cap and the hose going to the tank.

Bingo. If you aren't sealed there, the puke tank won't move.

But if you are filling the radiator, it should be pushing the excess coolant out when it gets hot and expands. If it's not going to the puke bottle and overflowing it, then where is it going? Doesn't sound promising does it.

 

[redneck2010]

you might wanna check the heater control valve, my 4.0 ohv had the sam problem and sure enough it was the heater control valve. im also new so good luck