Hi, I'm a new member here, and fairly unaccustomed to forum sites, so apologies if I've posted this in the wrong place etc, but I am at my wits end trying to figure out what's wrong with my car and figured I'd seek out help from the experts :)

I've got a streetka 1.6 duratec and recently its been giving me a lot of trouble. About 6 weeks ago, as I was driving to work, I noticed steam coming from the bonnet and a familiar coolant smell and so I stopped the car and noticed the thermostat housing had broken and was leaking all the coolant out. As it was a small leak, I let the car cool and limped it to a garage 2 miles away after topping it up with water (I had no breakdown cover) and the garage replaced the faulty thermostat housing, but advised that the cooling system was pressurising, which could mean other problems. From this point, I noticed that the heaters in the car were intermittent in supplying hot air, when the temp dial was set to hot.

Now, just over a month later, driving along, I notice steam again, and the coolant smell and this time the leak was bigger than before - the pipes that lead into and out of the heater control valve had somehow become brittle and snapped off. I stopped immediately and called the AA who did a temp repair to get me to the garage - they bypassed the control valve and topped me up with water. Upon the AA patrol leaving, and me heading toward a garage, I noticed it struggled to reach 40mph on the dual carriageway and was essentially misfiring badly. Again, I limped it to the garage who replaced the heater control valve with a euro car parts item and replaced the coil pack, which has for now cured the misfire. Why the misfire/coilpack issue happened just as the coolant issue happened, I don't know, maybe this is related? Again, the cooling system was pressurising for ages before my mechanic said he managed to get it to settle and he said drive it a few days with just water in to see how it gets on and if its okay, we'll drain and refill with antifreeze.

The past few days, I've done just that and it seems fine - except the heaters now would only blow cold air regardless of heat setting! I thought it was maybe the heater switch control panel, so I borrowed an old switch from a 1.3 ka and plugged it in to check if this was the case - and still cold air. I replaced my old heater control panel in the car and the next day, somehow all I get now is hot air! What is going on with this car? I'm worried about the next time something blows on this thing now and don't feel assured of taking it on a long journey.

On a side note, since I've owned the car, the fan always seems to kick in early and then stays constantly on, even in cold weather. The temp light never comes on, which leads me to think that the car isn't overheating. It has only come on once, which is the first incident when the thermostat housing went.

Sorry for the long essay, I thought it best to comprehensive about the problem. Any help is appreciated guys!

Aman

sounds like a faulty relay making the fan run. the heater problem maybe the heater matrix has gone and needs replacing. its located on the bulk head just below the windscreen

see below

Could be something as simple as a broken/worn waterpump as we had similar symptoms on an old citroen