Cooling OK ?

 

During the trip to GBS I had a chance to check the cooling

 

And there was good news.    Here we have her on the way there.  She sat at 85C for the first 2/3rds of the trip.  The blip was when I hit a traffic hold up at the junction of the A17 and A1.  It wasn't enough to trigger the fan and as you can see it rapidly came back to normal when I hit the open road.

And here she is on the way back.  Again a solid 85C.   Although this is a bit deceptive.   At the point where the intake temperature blips I had pulled into Grantham to get some fuel.  As an experiment I switched on the fan as I was in the 30mph zone and that was the result.  

When I got back there was no water in the overflow bottle and the water level was unchanged (and I was bit concerned to find I had forgotten to bolt the nosecone in, it was simply held in position by the bonnet resting on it).  So that is a relief, it means I don't have a leak or a blown head gasket (doesn't mean I shouldn't check it before every trip though😁).   I'm still not convinced that the seal between the pressure cap and the expansion bottle isn't a bit dodgy.  I added an extra rubber seal yesterday to see if that helped.  It may have done.   I also might start getting into the habit of switching the fan on if I can see an obvious trouble spot coming up, or traffic lights or a 30mph speed limit.   It is obvious now that once she gets too hot she starts dumping water and that makes her get even hotter.   Better to prevent her getting hot in the first place.    Or maybe revert back to a 92C fan thermostatic switch from the present 95C one ?

A couple of minor glitches, the carpet on the passenger side won't stay up any more, needs redesigning (not what you would call critical 😁), I think the clutch cable needs adjusting a bit, had a couple of occasions when I couldn't get into second, and someone pointed out that my offside DRLs weren't lighting up.   I have been thinking I would rewire them properly anyway so the soldering iron comes out tomorrow.