Hi,

new to this group and had a fault with this 1.6mpi, which, thanks to looking here has been fixed.

The car is 'p' regd. and has covered 72k miles. Temp guage shows high temp and the fan has not operated, so the car is stopped and later topped up, for the short drive home, where it overheats again, and begins leaking 'from underneath'.

I went over to have a look, pulled the two wires from the thermo sensor on the rad and bridged them, the fan works ok. Found the same fuse covers the horn and headlamp flasher, these work too.

Checked around the rad to find theres evidence of a slight leak at each end of the rad and it looks as if the therno sensor had been sealed badly previously.

Asked local Skoda dealer for a price on the rad and bought one from the local rad specialist for

You can get a whole housing or just the thermostat, cover and 'O' ring for around £25, what happens is that the blind hole in the cover gets broken out to be a complete hole which the thermostat pin goes straight through. As the thermostat has nothing to react against to make it open, it effectively stays shut - result engine gets hot, radiator stays cold and as the fan is operated off a thermo switch in the radiator it doesn't operate.

Common problem that one on the Polo also.

glad it's all fixed now, the only thing that concerns me is you using a switch to turn the fan on, in itselef it isn't a problem but becuase the rad fan isn't designed to run continuously you may burn out the motor if you leav it running all the time.

i used to have a felicia which i raced around in and i had a fancy engine management system in mine where i could program it to bring the fan on an off at set temps, because it was a modified engine the fan would run nearly all the time when idling or even if just stopped at trafiic lights, the consequence was that i would burn out the fan motor quite regularly.

glad it's all fixed now' date=' the only thing that concerns me is you using a switch to turn the fan on, in itselef it isn't a problem but becuase the rad fan isn't designed to run continuously you may burn out the motor if you leav it running all the time.

i used to have a felicia which i raced around in and i had a fancy engine management system in mine where i could program it to bring the fan on an off at set temps, because it was a modified engine the fan would run nearly all the time when idling or even if just stopped at trafiic lights, the consequence was that i would burn out the fan motor quite regularly.[/quote']

Hi Tom, thanks for your thoughts, I put the fan switch in the dash as a safety feature untill the correct thermo sensor was ready to be collected, ( it's also still connected to the thermo sensor, as the owner said later, it's a handy place to hang an air freshner, whatever THAT is)however, then realized all the symptoms pointed to the thermostat.

After replacing the thermostat and of course the housing attatched to it, it all worked as it should, including the thermo switch in the rad, of course the fan only operated for a few seconds each time.

Ok, it's good to cure and repair the fault, but it's a little depressing to have done all this and only have a car which performs in the manner it should, would have been more satisfyimg to have made a performance improvement!

regards urco:)

hello i am new here too and i am having the exact same trouble but when i took the thermostat out only a small bit of plastic came out with it so i thought maybe i would get away with just the thermostat without buying tha casing so i put a new thermostat in and it worked fine for a few days then it started all over again bottom hose cold ..no fan..so would u people think i need a new plastic casing or is there something else that is causing my problem

Its the small bit of plastic that causes the hassle.

You can get just the end cap if your feeling tight.

cheers m8 i have read loads and loads of threads about this and i think putting the full houseing on will cure the other problems we are having...hesitant..uses loads of juice more than my l/rover disco. but saying that it has always warmed up very quick and i meen quick it has a belting heater 1/2 a mile and its red hot and the guage always sits in the middle and i payed

took the thermostat out today and thought i would run it for a few days while i wait for the casing to arrive only to find that the engine warmed up as normal and the fan worked when the temp guage just goes over the half way line and heater works fine but i could not see any moving water in the expansion tank do you think the water pump could of gone as well it seamed strange the engine warms up as normal and runs fine without a t/stat in :confused: