Serpentine belt failure and subsequent overheat

(1998 1.3 16v EFI)
Hi, first post here and recent joinee of the Hijet club.

A couple of days ago I had an audible pop while driving and my battery light came on. Got it back home and saw my temperature gauge in the high, and coolant coming out of the bottom. Unfortunately due to my situation at the time couldn't get straight under to see where it was coming from.

Subsequently I have found the serpentine drive belt has snapped, and was jammed under the water pump pulley. I have removed it, the alternator and water pump pulleys aren't loose and turn fine, my expansion tank is empty, but there is some coolant left in the system. This obviously all adds up - battery not being charged by alt, and I'm assuming pressure built up in the coolant and came out of a weak spot?

My plan for tomorrow is replace the belt, bleed and refill the coolant system (as per the method on this forum), and find any leaks, but is there anything else I should consider changing/checking while I'm doing this? I may change my thermostat as my temp sometimes sits at 1/2 o'clock. I have just about every document related to the van since 1998 so can see the water pump was changed in '07.

Overall think I got off lightly, just praying my head has survived unhurt.

New belt fitted, no leaks so assuming the coolant came out of the expansion tank overflow.

Now wondering what the expected behavior of the temp guage is. Mine goes between 12-1 o'clock, nowhere near overheat though, is it just running slightly warm? I'm going to fit new caps to the radiator and under the passenger seat, and follow the topup procedure for coolant to make sure there's no air in the heater matrix (heater is blowing hot quite happily though).

Temp gauges vary. My '02 Hijet always sat quite high, about 3/4 of the way to OMGHGF. My '08 Porter rarely gets to 1/4. If yours is showing just over half-way it should be fine. Where did it sit before though?

PFM wrote:Temp gauges vary. My '02 Hijet always sat quite high, about 3/4 of the way to OMGHGF. My '08 Porter rarely gets to 1/4. If yours is showing just over half-way it should be fine. Where did it sit before though?

It did the same thing before, I'm just being extra neurotic about it now I'm going to take it for a long drive after I do caps and see how it goes.

On that topic I'm slightly confused on where the heater matrix bleed is, I don't have a capped hose on top of my radiator, just a smaller hose joining the neck of the filler cap. I'm assuming I just need to pop that up and get it back on once coolant comes out of it.

IIRC you shouldn't need to remove that hose as it should freely exit into the filler neck - might be worth just checking that it's not blocked though. Removeable cap is under the drivers seat on the 1.3, but by the rad cap on the 1.0.

PFM wrote:IIRC you shouldn't need to remove that hose as it should freely exit into the filler neck - might be worth just checking that it's not blocked though. Removeable cap is under the drivers seat on the 1.3, but by the rad cap on the 1.0.

That would make sense, d'oh. I'll make sure it's not blocked during the fill. Thanks for your replies.

After coolant refilled properly (there was some air in the heater matrix, hot air is much more efficient now), went for a drive down the a303 to test the temp, it maxes out at the temp shown in the image. I think this is fine? If I sit and idle the fan switches on intermitently at this temperature, so unless the fan switch is old/out this shouldn't be a problematic temperture I'm assuming. Forgot to check the hoses were hot post filling but I'll check them again.

Looks fine, just keep an eye on it.

Thinking I'm going to flush the radiator when I change my oil (pending some decent weather, my sunroof leaks are back so I'm going to deal with that too), I've noticed that the passenger side hose isn't warming up that much. My knowledge on cooling systems isn't great, although the hijet is fixing that, but it seems that the return hose should be fairly warm but cooler than the flow hose?

Any pointers on that would be appreciated, many thanks.

Hopefully this is a resolution update to this thread, the passenger side hose should be hot, it's the thermostat hose. My thermostat was either stuck closed or opening late. One new thermostat, and subsequently a new housing later and my temp sits solid just before the 12 o'clock mark. Hopefully happy driving for now as I don't want to flood my driveway with coolant all over again.