Hi All,

Just bought my first 5th Gen Lude last week and so far it seems to run alright bar a few issues I noticed the other day:

1. I was driving on a relatively hot day (>35 degrees C) and whenever I stopped somewhere and turned off the car, I could hear a noise coming from under the bonnet. I checked under the hood and noticed that the coolant overflow tank was full to the brim.

2. While driving I noticed that the temp gauge seemed to alternate between a bit below half way, and just a bit over half (not in the red).

3. Looking at the top hose I noticed that where it meets the engine there is some brown, thick crust around the lip. To me this looks a bit like it might be "chemi-weld" which has set.

4. Looking at the engine it looks like there is some oil (both baked on, grimey oil and regular viscous oil) on the drivers side of the block about half way down. I can't be too sure if this is coming from between the head and the block or not though (I'll try and take some pics when I can). Also I can see a glob of blue sealant that has oozed over the side of the rocker cover (indicating that someone would have taken it off at some stage), so it may be possible that there was oil leaking from around there that has dripped down.

5. I haven't driven a 5th gen before so don't know if this is normal, but sometimes it feels like certain gears don't have as much power as they should at certain revs i.e. in other cars where at a certain speed I could comfortably use third to accelerate properly, I need to use second. This could just be different gear ratios to what I'm used to and be perfectly normal but I'm not sure?

My theory: at some point the radiator has gone as the current one looks a lot newer than factory. Someone has probably driven on it whilst overheated causing the head gasket to go. As a cheap fix, someone has thrown some chemi-weld in the system to seal up the head gasket to keep the car running. I'm worried that perhaps I've purchased damaged goods.. who knows how much damage has been done and if the head has warped! I'd be happy if there were another potential explanation for this as I've just had a B4 Liberty that I spent about 4-5k on to fix a spun bearing and other issues :'(

If anyone has any ideas or theories then I'd love to hear them! (Even if the news is harsh).

Thanks!