Focus TDDi losing water....help please

[Ford100]

My 2001 Focus TDDi (130k miles) is rapidly losing water but I don't know how or where from. Here's the story. Owned the car for about a year with no issues. Never needed to top up water and never over heated. About a month ago she stalled while driving at speed so I looked at the gauges and noticed i had overheated. Pulled over and allowed to cool down and topped coolant up with 2 ltrs of water I happened to have in the car. Once home I topped right back up with water/antifreeze mix. Since then it has needed regular topping up. By that I mean the temp guage starts to rise above normal after around 50 miles or so and I need to refill with around 3-5 litres of water. The thing is, there is no sign of water leaks anywhere. No damp patches where I have parked, no dripping from underneath when hot or cold. The only evidence is where water came out of the cap on the original overheat. I did think maybe the head gasket had gone but the car runs and idles fine and does not seem down on power which I would suspect if the gasket was at fault. Any thoughts? Is it possible the head gasket has gone without showing any other symptoms? Thanks for any help you can give.

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[rog]

Only plausable explaination would be the gasket if you definately haven't got a visible leak.However, I am led to believe that certain models suffer from leaking or cracked thermostat housings, ahving just had a similar issue with a Ka, i read that it is not uncommon in focuses/transits etc etc... Might be worth a look

[Ford100]

Thanks for your answer. I will have to have a better look once the weather breaks.

Any more suggestions, please keep em coming.

Cheers

[phil_focus]

has your oil level changed at all as the head gasket could have gone between the water and oil galleries. mind you that would have over flowed by now too.

i'm very familiar with the 1800 and 2l mk1 focus having used my mum's and currently own the 2l. both cars have suffered from the thermostat housing cracking and pissing water everywhere so could be that although i dont know about the diesels.

[Ford100]

Thanks again for the answers.

An update: when starting from cold the car is producing alot of smoke. As far as I can tell this is steam rather than oil. (it smells steamy and not oily!)

This stops pretty much completely when the car is up to temperature.

I guess this also points to head gasket but why does the smoke/steam stop and if the head gasket was gone between water passage and combustion chamber why is the car not running even the slightest bit rough???

Oil is also still clean. No white deposits or milky appearance on filler cap or dip stick

I'm confused

Cheers

[tabetha]

Knackered turbo, ie crack causing water from the water cooling on it to enter the exhaust, so fault is on the turbine(exhaust) side, you don't see it as it has evaporated, once the engine/turbo/exhaust is up to temperature, you could try temporarily disconnect the water cooling, and bypass then take for a drive taking it easy and see the result.
I assume it is a KKK turbo ?
tabetha

[Ford100]

That's a good point. Haven't considered knackered turbo. Thanks for that, I'll add that to my list of checks as soon as this weather gets better.