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I think the thermostat has gone on the car (stuck open), any ideas from these symptoms?
Takes ages to get up to temp (90°) around town, if it reaches it at all. Never reaches 90° on a run and coolant temp drops with sustained speed (motorway etc.).
Car is a MK2 Octavia 2.0 CR Tdi.
Cheers!
How does the heater perform?
Poorly, you can't get hot, toast yourself air out of it.
What is the level of coolant in the overflow/expansion tank when the engine is cold vs when it is warm?
You can test for a stuck open thermostat by taking the radiator cap off when and looking at the coolant on the first start of the day. If the thermostat is stuck open you will see the coolant in the rad. swirling/moving.
Sounds like what happened on our Galaxy - it was actually a stuck thermostat valve. So it stayed in 'hot' mode all the time.
I changed the whole unit, sensor and valve myself as it was just a simple box on the end of the engine.
Identify pipe from thermostat to rad.
And the block to the thermostat.
Start car. When the pipe to thermostat starts to get warm if the thermostat has failed then the pipe to rad will get warm at same rate.
If thermostat is working - pipe should remain relatively cool in comparison.
Not sure if that particular engine runs a thermostat with an inbuilt bypass or a bypass loop direct to the inlet again.