Bongo Fury

Hi I'm new here and think I have a problem..
My Bongo has overheated several times in the last couple of 100 miles.
Each time I've stopped as quickly as I safely could.
I haven't seen any clouds of white smoke.
The first time there was an obvious burst pipe. This was replaced and the cooling system was bled properly.
The second time the thermostat housing had a crack where one of the pipes joined it, this was replaced and the system bled, but the bottom pipe wouldn't get hot. Water pump was checked and was ok, so a new rad was diagnosed as the solution. This was fitted, but the van was very hard to bleed aparantly, so the garage warned me that there may be head problems. I've now driven it about 20 miles since then, in which time it has emptied the all the water and overheated again.
Just to get home after this last one I let it cool down put 3 litres of water in it and bled it roughly, this got me home, with the van running at the normal temp and now apparent loss of water.
All the work has been done by folks who are familiar with Bongos.
So it looks to me that I have a fried engine, so have 3 choices.
1 Steel seal and hope.
2 New head.
3 Re conditioned engine..

1 looks to be most attractive from the cost point of view - but is putting gloop in a new rad a good idea?
2 Costs more, and one of the garages says that although they have done several of these they don't like to do them any more, as they think a new engine is better value for money, and suggest that the best thing to do is to ask on this Forum for recomendations of peopke to do this (I'm Southampton based)
3 Can any one recomend people to do this round here, and if so do you have any idea of how much more than a new head this generally works out?

Any advice would be great, as I'm really not sure what to do....

Try ringing Allan`s garage at Plymstock nr Plymouth.He`s a good guy with plenty of experience with bongo`s:-
TEL:-01752403400
MOB:-07970301013
E-MAIL:-[email protected].

if the botom hose wasnt hot when you bled it, there may be air still in there.

look on youtube there are videos on how to bleed a mazda bongo. these may help.

Wilfthered wrote:2 Costs more, and one of the garages says that although they have done several of these they don't like to do them any more, as they think a new engine is better value for money, and suggest that the best thing to do is to ask on this Forum for recomendations of people to do this

Not heard that one before, sounds dubious. There is no such thing as a NEW engine. A recon'ned used one may be an option but you may well inherit more problems depending on the rebuliders definition of what ReConditioned actually means. Some will just stick a cheap chinese copy head on a lump & sell it as such, I can pretty much guarantee that will open up a can of headache inducing worms, not a saving in the long term either financially or for your own peace of mind.


A new head from a reputable source on a known & trusted bottom end is by far the best route to take if it gets to that point.

Hi sorry to hear this.

Gerry and Fred at Discount Trucks in South Newbury are great , v patient and ultra trustworty and v knowledgeable - Bongo r their biz.

They also subscribe to suggestion 3 due to the fact that if the spen a day fitting a new head and it has issues which they find 4 out of 5 do u r back to square 1. For approx 400 hundred more u get new engine water pump cam belt etc ... anyway give them a call Fred will explain far better than I can but I have to say with my luck and in that situation I know I'd go for option 3 now. They can also recover your Bongo by the way.

Good luck !

I just got a new head for mine £265.00 delivered.

Thanks for the replies, I'll talk to the garage again to check that they bled it properly, but I'm pretty sure they did, (described the process with the bleed pipe etc, but said it was more of a nightmare than usual, kept bubbleing more than it should, and I'm pretty sure reading between the lines that they spent most of the day on it). After the new radiator and thermostat the bottom pipe was getting hot as it should.
I think I'll talk to discount trucks next week as they're not too many miles away and see what they think...

if your sure they bled it right,and that it took a long while to do,this may be an indication that the head has indeed gone. . they could try to do a sniff test,but this isnt always conclusive.

Hi there,

I had an issue with bleeding mine after a new thermostat. It wasn't a genuine one and for some reason it just didn't allow the system to be properly bled. Luckily for me Fred was doing it at discount and soon gave up and put the original genuine one in. That bled properly so a new genuine one was ordered and installed.

Now Fred didn't let the car overheat or leave without bleeding properly, if he had I'm sure I'd have been in trouble.

So in my case (and I have a petrol V6) a non genuine and possibly faulty new stat wouldn't allow the system to bleed properly. If that is what has happened to you then it may shed some light on what could have happened, if the engine has now suffered damage I would really recommend speakign to a garage that is good with bongos (there are several around) and take it from there.

Proper diagnosis of the entire system is really what you need, so that any parts changed really do need changing and will last. Just paying out for parts on the off chance isn't a good idea !!

Hope you get it all sorted out.

Andy