Water Pump Impeller broken or not?

[cello]

I recently noticed my heater was more of a cold air mover then a heater and started to investigate.....

 

1) The hot air flap could be heard moving when the heater control is turned from C to H and back again when H to C where when the engine is warm does give a slight bit of hea but the higher the fan speed the less the heat is produced.

2) The Pollen Filter was checked and is clean-ish and dry.

3) The coolant was up to the correct level but looked brown-ish.  I flushed the radiator a couple of times over a week and now the water is clean and have replaced with the right 50/50 mixture of coolant.

 

I have yet to check the pipes to the heater matrix but believe the issue to be a blocked core , as i used radweld after i started to lose coolant back in 2013 and did notice the drop in the heater temperature at the time.   However I noticed recently that the car does not get up to 90 deg C as quick as it used to do.  In fact it hovers around the 70-80 for a while and now seems to take a 25 minute drive to reach 90 rather then the 10 minutes it used to do,  from memory.

 

Is there a way to check the impeller is still doing its job and has not sheared off , I guess I could take the expansion bottle off and rev the car which should increase the flow returning to the bottle or maybe there is another way?

 

TiA

[Breezy_Pete]

Sounds more like thermostat failing than water pump.

 

[J.R.]

Stuck impellor shroud sleeve?

 

Other than that it does sound like a blocked heater matrix.

 

I had an 8mm bore radiator overflow pipe block solid from the dog turd type radweld, on the 5th lap of Goodwood the cooling system needed to vent some fluid but the blocked pipe prevented it, a radiator hose blew at high temp and pressure which was very impressive.

 

I have often wondered how it could do that but not block radiators and heater matrixes, I guess its all to do with exposure to oxygen and the overflow pipe was the perfect conditions for it to do its stuff.

 

With all the various metals in the cooling system and also the Silkat I think there may be some oxygen produced within the heater circuit which could cure the radweld.

[cello]

1 hour ago, Breezy_Pete said:

Sounds more like thermostat failing than water pump.

 

Yeah I had wondered about this, would it that mean that the thremostat stays shut and the water that feeds the radiator (temp sensor)  , heater matrix would not get hot enough to produce a good flow of hot air through the cabin?

 

I understand that the engine could overheat as well as there not be a good flow of water around the engine/cooling system or conversely the car would take longer to warm up if the thermostat stuck in the open position but ultimately once up to temp the heater should provide a normal hot charge of air into the cabin.

[Paws4Thot]

@cello - Ignore @J.R. ; He's written a fantasy based on you having a Fabia mk3 or later. @Breezy_Pete and I are talking about the engine you actually have in this car (1.9 TDi130 Pompe Duze).

 

It's more likely that the thermostat has stuck open or broken up allowing full flow through the radiator even on a cold engine than that it has stuck closed. This is based on your report of a much slower warm-up, and no mention by yourself of engine overheating.

[Stewartasb]

I would deffo go with thermostat then drain coolant and access the heater matrix pipes and flush them with a jet wash i had to do this and it cleared the crap out of the heater matrix and freed it up.

[J.R.]

4 hours ago, Paws4Thot said:

Ignore @J.R. 

 

If only you would.