Volkswagen LT van with a coolant light on

Coolant bottle
Coolant bottle

This LT van covers a huge amount of miles per month so we tend to look after it and getting it turned around back on the road as quickly as possible.

The owner called to say that his radiator light was on. He bought it straight down and left it with us.

We checked over the cooling system and saw a huge amount of oil in the coolant expansion tank. Our initial thougts were that the head gasket had failed but on closer examiniation realised that the oil cooler has failed.

Very mucky oil
Very mucky oil

Our apprentice was on the case and spent 2 days cleaning out the cooling system - he doesn't really want to do that kind of job again in a hurry.

We fitted a new oil cooler, flushed through the engine with de-greasers, replaced the oil and oil filter.

The customer came back 2 weeks later for a further oil change and to re-new the cooling system with fresh coolant.