Loosing the Expansion Tank, Top fill?

[rich4130]

Anyone done the above?? MK1 golf bits im guessing?? Or early mk2 polo maybe?

[jez1272gt]

you can use a mk1 golf rad but i dont know how it will fit in terms of placement and also the fan cowling but another option is to cut the top rad hose and fit a pressure filler cap into the hose.. seen them for sale on the internet somewhere but cant for the life of me remember where..

[hayesey]

you could use an early mk2 polo rad but it wont have the same amount of tubes in it as a gt/g40 rad so you might have cooling issues but it's unlikely unless the engine is quite highly tuned.

I assume you are just doing this to get a cleaner, tidier engine bay.

[Puncharado]

Not really anything to be gained from this. If you plumb it up as a non-sealed system you should still have an un-pressurised reservoir bottle, one that is connected to the conventional pressure cap, allowing fluid to flow to and from the reservoir when expansion and contraction occurs, this is pointless. Otherwise not having a reservoir bottle and just leaving the pressure cap expell to air means you'll just be dumping coolant and then topping it up all the time, again pointless. If you just want to tidy up the engine bay the best bet IMO is to get a nice small ally expansion tank and plumb it in as normal, but mount it to the engine or bulkhead instead of the wheelarch. Something like the pic in this thread: -

http://www.polog40.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,3873.0.html

[hayesey]

well an early mk2 rad has the expansion tank built into the side of the radiator

[Puncharado]

well an early mk2 rad has the expansion tank built into the side of the radiator

Ah I see, this I didn't know. I've not owned a mk2 (only Polo I've owned is my G40), and although friends have had them I've never worked on one either. In my experience of this type of system the vehicles have had a seperate reservoir bottle. The cooling system in my kit car retains the standard R1 bike set up, where the reservoir bottle is fixed to one of the rad tanks. I think it looks quite neat in the car.

[youngprodigys]

this is probibly going to be the worst sales pitch in history, here goes

Ive done this - i put an inline radiator cap on my G40
heres a photo in a old thread


and the reason i took it out was because is really really hard to position the cap high enough to be able to properly fill up the system. if you want to play silly buggers il sell you the filler along with the 2 hoses required to replace your top radiator pipe for £15 - you will just have to block up the 2 other pipes.

KiZ

[Tommo]

Doesnt the fill level in your expansion tank have to be above the rest of the cooling sytem to about airlocks? I would have thought the standard rad is too low for this, although it must have worked on the mk2's.

Unless you have an air bleed, but surely filling the rad would be impossible from the top of it?

[PeteG40]

most people have an air bleed on the heater matrix, but he's obviously ditched his