So for the past few weeks I've been working on my brother's NIVA. If you are not familiar with the Russian 4x4, it's one of those rare things communist Russia did right, for a change.
As with many things old tech, most people today don't know how to fix them. We live in a "just replace the whole thing" type of society after all. But, because I'm stubborn, I kept on working on it until everything worked again.
Needless to say, I feel like I was in a LADA bootcamp, but I'm quite grateful for the knowledge I acquired. Calling my usual mechanic to tell him I figured out the last piece of the puzzle, the one who gave up on, was tempting, but I held back due to the simple fact that it would not be productive to rub it in his face.
I should preface the following part of the story with some context. This car is 22 years old, and it was recently purchased by my younger brother. He's had it for about 3 months, and before the car living in this crazy hot weather we survive in, it lived in a very cold region of the country.
This is important to know because the overheating issue was not an issue when the car lived up in the mountains. It simply was too cold for it to happen. It's hard to overheat a car when it's living in sometimes subzero weather. At any rate, I drove the car down from the mountains and made it to our home city without much problems.
I did notice the temperature above the comfortable range, but since I was doing 80 MPH on the freeway, it was "under control" so to speak. Everything was going well, until I hit traffic. All of the sudden the temperature needle was playing with 248 Fahrenheit or 120 Celsius (as it's more commonly measured down here in South America).
Of course, I had to visit the shop right away....
I'm quite handy with tools, and I'm not one to be afraid to disassemble anything. As a matter of fact, it makes me quite happy to understand the inner workings of anything. But, since this car was very different than the ones I usually work on, I decided to take it to the pros.
To my surprise, the pros needed guidance. I mean, to be honest, we all did, but then again im a mechanic aficionado, not a shop owner. But regardless, we got to work on the Russian Tank.
In three days, we changed head gasket, cleaned everything well, of course, all fluids, including transmission and crowns. Cleaned up some of the wiring (lot's of dead wires everywhere) and got it working order. Compression was over 130 for each cylinder, the starter was not struggling anymore (changed the carbons), fixed some stupid shorts, and we all thought it was done.
Car is still in the shop. The mechanic, and his friend, who specializes in electronics cannot figure out why it's not cooling. The electric fans are turning on, but it still not cooling.
Both techs ask me to buy a bunch of stuff. New relays, new sensors, new spark-plug cables, new Battery, and that's off what I can remember at this point. I've sunk well over $400 in parts into the car and the overheating issue is still there.
I simply got tired of waiting for them to figure it out. The two professionals had exhausted their ideas, and just scratched their heads in bewilderment.
Thanked them both, of course, and drove the car home praying that it would not blow a gasket in the attempt. It was not a very hot day so it made it.
For the next 10 days or so, I dove head first into manuals and forums of this darn thing. I took apart the harness, checked relays, and ran all types of experiments trying to figure out what was really happening.
In a desperate attempt to discard the possibility of the temperature gauge being simply incorrect. I purchased an aftermarket digital gauge, and adapted it to run off the head. I finally had a true reading of the temperature, and not just the hope that the 22 year old needle was still doing its job.
Now keep in mind I'm keeping the story short here, but I truly got into every corner of this thing, looked at every wire and every sensor. Just like that I was ready to give up, to tell my brother this thing is just a lemon, and that he had wasted the money, when I found a very important video.
Ok, before you tell me this was such an amateur thing, and that I should have checked it first, let me defend myself. Yes, I had the mechanic check it, and he told me it was removed and "good to go".
You see, a common "repair" down here is to remove this important component off the engines, due to the weather here being so hot all the time. At the end of the day, it's never a good thing to remove it, but if the car stays in the city, stays in the heat, then it really doesn't hurt it that much.
Well, on most cars, but on the LADA NIVA removing it is a huge problem. YUGE!.
What does it mean good to go? This thing is not a simple valve, it's a double valve thermostat that closes two separate loops. Could it be that instead of making sure that the water flow is always towards the radiator, the thing is just pumping back into the engine? After all, water flows towards the easiest path.
The "good to go" thermostat is nothing but a rusty piece of garbage. It's not prepped, it's just wide open, and stupidly so.
I bought a brand new one, an original LADA part for a whooping 18 bucks, and guess what? It's working perfectly now.
Yes, you read that right. An $18 component was the culprit.
If there is one lesson for me to take from all this, is to not assume mechanics know everything. Sometimes they just learn the "default procedure" from watching others do it, but they don't necessarily know how it works, or why it was designed this way.
Not bashing on the techs per-say. I mean, I kind of am, but just a bittle lit. I'm simply not saying they've done this to hurt me, or to extract more money from me. That is all.
Anyways, long battle, but I'm going to call it won for now.
MenO
