Hi I have just had a friend of mine call me asking for roadside help over the phone.

She has a 2000 1.2/1.25/1.3 (?) Fiesta Zetec that has had the following problem of late:

When driving the temperature gauage 'randomly' starts to show the car as overheating. Her local back street garage has looked at it four times and can't solve the problem.

Has had replaced:

Rad cap.
Fan and switch.
Thermostat and Guage sender.
The EBOD shows no faults.

It had a score in the old rad cap seal which was quoted as being a "bodge" to fix the problem. Using No water, but is using a little oil (Max to Min in 10 days).

Is this sounding like HGF?

Can she complete her drive (100 miles ish) or would this cause more problems?

Help me please.

Thats an awful lot oil consumption for a 7 year old car.
Can you see any blue smoke coming from the exaust when the car is running?
Whats the condition of the oil and water? Any signs of mayo?

Does the heater work? Could be a problem with the heater matrix somewhere, a blockage or a sticky bypass valve....

No mayo or Smoke. She does quite a lot of miles living in the middle of nowhere, but even so that is a lot of oil. She didn't say it was actually full just the the garage topped it up, so I assumed it was full.

She did get a slap on the wrists for not checking it though, it was sooo empty when they got to it that it needed 3L to top it up. (girls!! :rolleyes: ).

The ford zetec forum mentions that the new thermostats are "too Good" and don't let enought water past to actually activate them. Could be this. They recommend drilling a 3mm hole in the diaphram.

Otherwise it looks to me like HGF.