This year has been an absolute pain where our vehicles are concerned, first the Mini failed the MoT big time, that took me nearly a week to fix, even with the help of my good mate Russ. Then the Jag blew up, then the starter went on the mini, then the starter went on the van. That left me with 3 useless vehicles on the drive. Anyway, I am writing this about the van just because I could not find this information anywhere on the interweb, I hope it proves useful to somebody.
Anybody that has done any engine work on these vans will know what a pain they can be, so many jobs require the whole front end to be removed, I can do it in about 20 minutes now, it took over 2 hours the first time. Anyway, I had to replace the starter, the old one had a tired bendix drive and I felt is was only a matter of time before it failed. It lives at the front of the engine, to get at it easily you need to remove both headlights, the bumper, the intercooler and support bracket, numerous little bits and the biggest pain of all - the radiator. It's not difficult but it does have to be drained, that's where the problems start.
The starter swap was easy once you get to the thing, a bit of a faf to wiggle out but not too bad at all really. The van all went back together nicely, the coolant was topped up, left to bubble away for a bitt and then topped up again. The new starter worked perfectly, great I had a running van again. Only problem was the dash was saying Check emissions, check injection, the service light was on and then eventually the MIL light came on. I read the codes, as this is always the first thing to do with any modern vehicle, it was coming up with P2425 , which has a description of egr cooler open circuit, or words to that effect. I searched for the code on line but could not find anything other than one video that suggested a broken wire on the egr or cooler valve.
The whole front had to come off again, a careful search was conducted but no broken wires or loose pipes were found so I decided it was best to ignore the fault code and think about what had changed. I now knew I hadn't disturbed any pipes or wires, it had to be something else. I thought about how these things work and realised that the word circuit may not apply to the electrical circuit but maybe there was something to do with the coolant circuit. I had bled the system by running until hot but maybe, just maybe if no coolant was flowing through the valve that could be my problem I released the pipe retaining cli and gingerly removed the pipe, ready to push it back on as the water gushed out. Well I removed the pipe and not one drop of coolant came out - obviously that was the problem but why was there no coolant - the header tank was near max. I took the lid off the header, that did the trick, coolant came pouring out with great vengeance and furious anger. It was at this point that it occurred
To me it seemed that there must be a vent somewhere to allow the system to be bled, sure enough by following the pipe back it goes to a small bleed valve that you would be very hard pushed to even see when the van is put together. I opened it up and although there was some liquid in there, it didn't come pouring out until I opened the header tank cap again. A fair bit of air came out and so did a fair bit of coolant so I was pretty sure at this stage that the system was now fully bled and it was worth giving it a try. I am delighted to say the fault has now gone away and everything is back to normal.
I would like to thank the French engineers that designed this bastard van, you must have laughed a lot when you came up with a nonsensical text for the manufacturer specific fault code. Putting that bleed valve down there where you can't even see it, let alone get to it must have provided you with hours of amusement. I hate you all.
video on youtube for anybody interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZReNQSe1Is
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