Just had the transit in the garage to address an oil leak & coolant leak...
It's had a new water pump, timing belt, aux belts, thermostat & thermostat housing. Oil & filter change.
Now though, it seems to be running hot -- when I say hot, I mean still in the 'normal' range but 3/4's of the way along; seemingly going up the longer it's on the road. I've only done a couple 30min journeys but my worry is it'd not plateau/level off if I carried on driving & another half hour on the road we'd be hitting the red.
Being driven the temp gauge rises quite quickly from cold.
Stationary however, with the engine left to idle, the temp gauge takes a significant amount of time to get into 'normal' range (almost 50minutes).
All heaters in the cab work fine - take a while, but heat up/clear the windows pretty efficiently for an old motor. I can't see any bubbling in the coolant res. Have given the hoses a good mess to try and eliminate any air locks (have been panicking from day one about the head; but nothing else points to this no exhaust smoke, oil is clean - gotta be pretty special to kill a banana engine, right?).
Do I need to worry? Shall I give it a blast up & down the a38? Really push it & see what happens? How reliable is the temp gauge?
Going back to my usual (and best) mechanic on Wednesday, but hoping to do a 60mi round trip in it tomorrow (with cargo) - so just weighing up whether to chance it. What could this be? Radiator? Heater core? Hmm...
