Coolant bleeding, temperature issues, head gasket failure.

Hi everyone, newbie here.

So I've got this issue trying to sort the girlfriends C3, hoping you guys can shed some light?

It's a 56 plate 1.4 petrol, she had some issues 2 months back and it went to a Citroen garage in Doncaster and among other things had the head gasket done there.
She left mine on Monday to go home and managed to get to a service station on the M1. The car had overheated and spewed it's coolant out the header tank. A call out to RAC and 2hrs later towed back to mine. The RAC guy thought it may be the temp stat. I found the o-ring on the coolant cap broken which wouldn't have helped, I replaced the temp stat and have been trying to bleed the coolant. I finally used a piece of braided hose and container to get the coolant level higher than the heater matrix. I had the engine running for must've been30 mins last night. The coolant boiling and still looking like air was in the system and when the engine starts getting warm the coolant level will rise by around 3 litres, switch the engine off and the coolant will all go back in the engine. (In all my days of working on cars, I have never seen coolant rise and fall so much)

Also I never once saw the rad fan come on, I took the plug off the fan and got 12v and the plug's at the top of the rad cowl, 1 with 2 wires and 1 with 4 wires, I'm also getting 12v off the plug with 2 wires. In my head that makes the fan faulty, would I be right in this assumption? There is no temp gauge in the car so can't see how the temp is doing ( wonder who's brainwave that was).

Many thanks in advance.

Hi Johnny C3

. I finally used a piece of braided hose and container to get the coolant level higher than the heater matrix. I had the engine running for must've been30 mins last night. The coolant boiling and still looking like air was in the system and when the engine starts getting warm the coolant level will rise by around 3 litres, switch the engine off and the coolant will all go back in the engine. (In all my days of working on cars, I have never seen coolant rise and fall so much)

Sounds like the head gasket has failed, (again).

You can get a head gasket tester kit on Amazon, by clicking this link, which may save a bit of time in proving my suggestion.

This topic Citroen C3 coolant refilling tips has the procedure and details of the correct coolant for the C3 and it's refilling procedure.

Thanks for the reply Arfur.
I'm cautiously optimistic that I have sorted the issue. Can't help myself when I get my teeth into something.

I brought a new expansion cap as this was seriously weakened. Put that on this morning, plugged my bluetooth reader into car and ran up to temperature. The coolant level still rose, temp got upto 108c without the fan coming on and switched engine off as coolant had risen close to top. Came on here to find what temp the fan should come on at and only managed to find an article about various sensors and problems with dirty connectors than problematic sensors. I cleaned up the coolant sensor near the top of engine and long story short the fan now works as it should. Comes on at around 96c and goes off around 88c and coolant does'nt rise upto the top of expansion vessel.

As a word of warning to other users on here, Evans Halshaw Citroen at Doncaster I believe did the headgasket when nothing was wrong with it. The video the girlfriend got of the initial verification claims oil was leaking from the headgasket and covering the A/C compressor. The head/gasket is above the alternator with the A/C compressor sitting below that. The A/C compressor has a covering of oil underneath it around the joint, but the alternator has no evidence of oil contamination. So, EH believe oil can bypass the closest thing to it, the alternator and cover something below it!
Also, surely the mechanic should have checked and noticed the expansion vessel cap for one and also that the fan was not working after doing such work as a head gasket. That is way too much of a coincidence to me. It's people like this that give honest mechanics a bad name IMHO.
Hope this helps others at some point

JohnnyC3 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 03, 2018 12:51 pm I cleaned up the coolant sensor near the top of engine and long story short the fan now works as it should. Comes on at around 96c and goes off around 88c and coolant does'nt rise upto the top of expansion vessel.

Thanks for the solution