Hi,

Basically, its beaten everyone..

Changed radiator, expansion bottle + cap, thermostat, waterpump, and its still leaking.

Pressure tested to 200bar, and headgasket test by the garage, theyve also looked around it.

Everything seems fine.

But if driven hard, the temperature raises quite alot, and then coolant light and its low..

Ive put kitchen towel under the bottle and its getting wet? But only under hard load, im guessing its coming out of the overflow?

The pipes are opening up.

Any ideas PLEASE?

Really getting beyond me now!

Thanks!

cracked cylinder head mate sorry to burst your bubble but the cylinder head will be expanding with the heat under heavy load. contact TULA on here he bought my old one and was suffering with this. he said a replacement cylinder head cured this not cheap but as you have explored all other options.

Don't panic. Might just be a faulty head gasket or a warped cylinder head. I had a ford pinto engine in a kit car that only blew water out if I sat on the motorway at 90 for some time. Everything was checked, compression, cylinder leak-down, water-pump, rad, hoses, stat, pressure tested cooling system. All normal. Changed cylinder head gasket. Still the same. Thought it must be a cracked head and took it to the engineers who crack tested it but found nothing. They did say they thought it might be slightly warped and gave it the lightest skim. Problem solved! I can only presume that the engine and water needed to be very hot before the fault showed and disappeared as it cooled down.

Your garage tested cylinders to 200 bar? That's some pressure test!

My vrs did this only lost coolant under high load

My solution - sold it

I have a cylinder head for a Fabia vRS. Bought it when I thought my Fabia had a porous head (kept losing coolant after long journeys, no obvious leaks, despite being pressure tested), and after the garage stripped the head down, they found the gasket was going, so only replaced that.

Leaving me with a cylinder head spare! Let me know if you're interested in it. I bought it from a lad on here (devonutopia) if you need to know its history.

I recently traded in my Fabia after a Yeti turned up for about the right money...

Exactly the same thing was happening on mine. Turned out to be a tiny headgasket problem and coolant was being lost only at heavy load. Had the head skimmed and a new gasket fitted and it has been perfect ever since and that was over 50,000 miles ago. Still going strong at 145,000 miles. It was £590 all in and was well worth doing rather than selling, as I knew that the car was running well and was well maintained.