Ready for the Alps???

Received a few missing gaskets yesterday afternoon, enabling me to finish the water pump change. Which meant refitting the manifold and carburettors, and connecting everything up again. As I always use a very thin film of sealant on both sides of the gasket, and this had to set for 24 hours, I had to wait till this afternoon before I could refill the coolant system and take the car for a little test drive. This enabled me to pack up a bit of hopefully not needed stuff, like some spanners, a bit of oil and coolant etc. All in preparation for the Alps.

And this afternoon it was time to fill up the coolant system and go for a test drive. Which almost not happened. After starting up pretty nicely I reversed of the drive onto the street, but half way there the engine started to splutter, and it felt as if it was only running on 2 to 3 cylinders. And when I wanted to return to the carport the engine cut out altogether ...

But she started up immediately and ran as if nothing had happened, so I did go for a test drive. Car behaved very well, temperature went up as it should till a third of the scale and remained there. And the coolant light stayed of, also a good sign. But all that changed when I returned home and opened the bonnet. I was looking at the biggest coolant spill I have ever seen from the slot underneath the water pump. So nothing I could do and let the engine cool down and see how the coolant level was. That turned out to be quite fine (I had overfilled the system slightly). Time for another check, I started the engine and let it run till it was full warmed up.

As you can see there were no signs of any leaks and the paper tissues I had put in the slot remained absolutely dry. Will put it down to a water pump seal that needed to seat itself. But something I will keep an eye on in the next few days when we’ll be touring the Alps. We should actually have been somewhere in the Alps already, but due to the water pump and René’s health, we’ll now be leaving tomorrow morning. So hopefully next entry will be some nice shots of the car with some Alpine back grounds ...