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Where's the coolant?

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Trevor Triumph

Jedi Knight
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Did you again feel the addition to the force? Last week I retorqued the head bolts and adjusted the valves. A friend adjusted/ tuned the carbs, checked the timing, added a restricter to the valve cover openning, and made some adjustment to the distributer cap. It is amazing what can happen when one knows what to do! The cars pulls well throughout the range- off idle to over fourth without complaint.
Still there is a coolant mystery. The temperature gauge shows hot, about two thirds or three fourths of the needle travel. Checked by an infared theromometer all is OK- top of the radiator 177, the block about 199. When the car cools off there is coolant missing from the radiator. I don't notice oil in the coolant or coolant in the oil. There is no aroma of coolant at the exhaust, and no evidence of coolant on the floor.
 
Sounds like a 195F thermostat, perhaps combined with an inaccurate gauge. How hot is the bottom of the radiator ?

Is your recovery tank working ? It's normal for the water in the radiator and block to expand when it gets hot. Not sure which Triumph you have, but on earlier ones (like my TR3A) you simply had to leave room in the radiator for the water to expand, meaning it always looked low when you checked it. Later cars had a recovery bottle, but you didn't mention it ...
 
Hello Trevor,

that doesn't sound hot to me, you need to worry when the gauge is near full scale, engines are happier when running at a good operating temperature. Also if you just re-filled the system you can have air pockets also. Just top up (not fill) the radiator and monitor its consumption, if any?

Alec
 
You don't say how much coolant is disappearing but if it is enough to leave the temp sensor in a dry (or sometimes dry) area then the gauge reading will not necessarily be meaningful.

If it is gone it went somewhere... my bet is out the tailpipe but perhaps not to the extent that it can be easily detected by looking or sniffing.
 
What kind of Triumph are we talking about here. My TR3 will always spit out some coolant so that it is about 1 1/2 inches below the filler cap when cool.
 
I think it's a Spitfire, ergo it should have an recovery bottle and the rad should remain fullish.

(Mr Doom & Gloom) A small head gasket failure will let a fair amount of coolant depart w/o leaving a lot of evidence of a problem (other than disappearing coolant). I drove quite a spell with such a problem (including a 4th of July parade)... just kept a close eye on it and spare coolant in the boot.
 
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