Bongo Fury

Buy a Green bongo, no need for any jungle juice.

As a result of all the peeps who have used Steel Seal and other products....unless I personally knew the history of a u.k. used Bongo I thinks I would only go for a fresh import.

Interesting discussions on this so I wondered what Steel Seal was, and if you could detect its use.....
Turns out that its primarily Sodium Silicate or as folks of my age may remember it as Water Glass ! Yes Magic Water Gardens ??
Link to Wikipedia which describes its use ...
Interestingly it has another use as well as described above for Automotive Repair, its also used as Vehicle Disablement discussed above underneath vehicle repair!
Pour it in the wrong hole and you won't have another problem with the engine as described here.
Unfortunately its use is just about impossible to discover, once its been used and flushed out of the coolant system, as the product will have turned to glass in the "leaky" seal

Thought I'd post the relevant bit....well spotted g8dhe.....the bit about coolant changes and vehicle not being used ( stood on docks) could explain a lot of HGF's

Automotive repairSodium silicate can be used to seal leaks at the head gasket. A common use is when an alloy cylinder head engine is left sitting for extended periods or the coolant is not changed at proper intervals, electrolysis can "eat out" sections of the head causing the gasket to fail.

Rather than remove the cylinder head, "liquid glass" is poured into the radiator and allowed to circulate. The waterglass is injected via the radiator water into the hotspot at the engine. This technique works because at 210–220 °F the sodium silicate loses water molecules to form a very powerful sealant that will not re-melt below 1500 °F.

A sodium silicate repair of a leaking head gasket can hold for up to two years and even longer in some cases. The effect will be almost instant, and steam from the radiator water will stop coming out the exhaust within minutes of application. This repair only works with water-to-cylinder or water-to-air applications and where the sodium silicate reaches the "conversion" temperature of 210–220 °F

Thanks guys for enlightening us with the Chemistry angle on the product. ...shows why is some cases it works..... and can be undetected....
As for the "good or bad" opinion from me.... .. I think I would feel cheated if I was unaware of the fact that my engine had been treated with a product like this, however, if the "repair" is as good as the chemistry suggests.....and in the right conditions, I can't see how when applied it would fail in the immediate future.....now to add a little more to the last thoughts.....Chances are...and knowing how poor the WL-T heads really are and the fact that ALL vehicles fitted with WL-T heads have known cracking issues(not just Bongo's)....then at sometime the head might need replacing and as most Bongos are 10yrs old plus....
I personally would not be surprised to have to factor in the cost of a replacement at sometime during ownership...
As some of you know I have been looking into who makes the O.E parts for Mazda to package as their own,I'm getting on slowly and being distracted along the way.... But I have found that a recommendation by all Thermostat makers and outlets that the water pump should be replaced at the same time as well as the coolant.....
Thinking about this...adding 'stat/water pump/ coolant at 5yrs intervals (as Japs use LLC similar to our Red stuff) would probably have saved some heads from failure...and when you add up the cost of said items....it's a whole lot cheaper than a head...

avoiding all references to steel seals (arf arf) . . . . I had the dreaded "suddenly lost 4.5l of water from serious pressure through the escape on my header tank - think you've got a cracked head fella" on Friday of last week

Anyhow, refilled and drove gently about half mile (minus 2litres), topped up and drove home (minus another 2.5l) and then read this forum about steel seal and decided that rather than the £1400 quoted by my friendly import vehicle expert I'd give it a try. So on Sunday I did (and managed a superb burn across left index finger while mastering the seasaw method - or not as it were - whilst removing all the air from the system).

So I drove around 3 very tentative miles this evening trying to keep below 3000 revs and so far . . . . . no topping up needed. Will try driving to work tomorrow (a very tentative mile each way) and perhaps a little further and a little faster in the evening if all's well - maybe if I'm feeling brave.

My main reason for posting is to say thankyou for all the really good advice and help in this thread - and particularly to Bikemonkey for the continued updates (hope everything still going well).

As well as enjoying summer jaunts I mainly use my Bongo for work (teacher) and gigging on the weekends where I'm pretty fully laden with quite heavy gear, so still not sure whether I'll hire again next weekend just in case the steel seal hasn't fully cured the situation, but so far so good.

Again, big thanks to all who've posted in this thread and if anyone's got any further advice it'll be greatfully received.

So far . . . . 3 miles . . . . . reched normal temperature . . . . no water loss . . .