Cooling System Complete

Well, the engine cooling system has been completed, with a new water pump, rad and as-new intercooler.  I didn’t replace the serpentine belt as it’s only a year or so old, but the squealing is gone!  Not a trace of it!  It’s a petty thing, but that squeal has been annoying me for the last couple of years.  It’s very common on the 300Tdi, but the advice given always revolves around cleaning the pulleys, replacing the belt and fitting a new tensioner – no-one ever mentions the water pump.  So, if you have repeatedly done the belt, pulleys and tensioner without success, you now know what the likely culprit is.

The aircon condensor (with its new drier bottle and electric fans) is fitted, so the rad will not need removal when the aircon gets fitted.  The condensor pipe ends are blocked off to prevent the new drier being wrecked.  Fitting it was briefly frustrated by the pipes fouling on the front panel’s right side air dam – this comes back to the radiator and is full height on non-aircon models.  Aircon models have a shorter air dam on that side (though the other sides fully enclose the rad aperture) which extends from the bottom corner to just below the lowest condensor pipe.  I thought it was going to be a pig of a job to cut down, but the dam is only attached by four 3.5mm pop-rivets.  The heads were drilled off, the dam removed and cut down to length (as was its rubber edge strip), it was treated for surface rust and rivetted back in place.  The condensor assembly fit straight in after that, and as the soft-dash RRC have most of (though seemingly not all)/ the aircon wiring already in place,  the fans were connected to their wiring harness.

One minor snag became apparent during the final stages of reassembly – the engine fan’s viscous hub is starting to seize up.  While it is still able to be turned by hand, it’s stiffer than it should be.  Amazingly, that same friend who gave me the intercooler and lent me some of the tools to do the job also has a new viscous hub, another spare for the cherished D90 he used to own until a few months ago.  It’s a low priority job as the only effects a seized hub will have are slightly higher fuel consumption and possibly a slightly longer warm up time, but it’s a simple task, so will be done as soon as he finds the hub in his garage.