HI Guys,

I've got myself a unmodded UK hawkeye sti that like the title says occasionally overheats. I live 30 something miles from work and on the whole the scoob is pretty well behaved, during the everyday commute where you only get to boot it now and again its fine, but if I finish late (past the watershed when the schools are long closed and everyones safely tucked up at home) and i get a chance to have a play, i get about 25 miles into my journey and all of a sudden the temp gauge will start rising rapidly. So I pull over and turn the car off (no chance to let it cool down ), turn it on one key click so that the fans are turning and let it cool down for 10 - 15 mins and the rince and repeat my way home. The next morning everything will be fine, and given the traffic I won't get to have another proper play for a few day, when I do its hit or miss if it will do it again.

When it does it, the clear plastic top up coolant resevoir is full to the top, like it won't go into the rad (sometimes a bit comes out the top of the resevoir, but hardly any). The next morning all the coolant levels look normal.

I have checked it when it overheats and the fans are running ok (sounds like at full tilt too.)

I've checked the oil, and it looks fine.

I've taken it to the dealer twice and they have preasure tested it (apparently), checked all the piping and can't find any leaks or problems.

Now I don't know if it helps, but the first time I noticed it, we'd had heavy rains and i had to drive through some high water and there was A LOT of steam from under the car and the temprature gauge started to go up straight away, luckily i wasn't far fro m home.

Now I do like my dealer, they've been pretty good about it (not charging me for picking up the car and looking at it twice, even cleaning it for me) but I work in IT so I know the score, if you can't see something not working its pretty hard to diagnose it, but now I've pretty much lost faith in the car, I can't have a decent play because its probably gonna play up, I drive the same way as i did with my old WRX PPP, so hopefully the new one should take it.

Its got less than 28k on the clock and its still got 5 months extended warrenty. I've read about air locks, but wouldn't it overheat more often? When it does play up, I do struggle to get hot air out of the heaters, if that helps at all?

I'm saving to get it PPP'd or a powerstation upgrade pack, but with it the way it is, I can't even have a play with the meger power it comes with, so any suggestions are greatfully accepted.

BTW i'm not the most mechanicly minded so go easy on me

Dave

 

head gasket

 

The Dealer have said they have done compression tests, wouldn't that show up a head gasket failure? (As long as they have) If it is the gasket, would that be a warrenty issue or is that one of the many things that isn't covered?