damage caused by overheating?

[Kate]

Hi

My Megane (1.6, 53 reg) recently overheated as the cooling fan had stopped working. Luckily I noticed it was overheating and I pulled onto the side of the road just as steam started coming out of the radiator cap.

The radiator fan switch has now been replaced but im concerned that the radiator cap or other components may have been damaged. Should the cap be replaced after its been blown off by the pressure caused by overheating?

Also when I picked up my car from the garage the trim around the gear stick was hanging off. Can anyone tell me why they would have needed to access this? Im curious to know whats under there!

Thanks to anyone who can offer advice.

Kate

[IainMW]

Firstly welcome to the Forum Kate

You should not need anything replacing unless a particular component has suffered damage as a result of the overheating. If the cap was blown off then yes I would say this does need replacing.

The head gasket on the engine can fail when an engine overheats (but not always so don't panic just yet)

If the garage has checked the car over and given it a clean bill of health then don't worry, just keep your eye on it for the next weeks or so to see if anything goes wrong. Not sure why they would have removed the trim around your gear lever though? But it's poor workmanship for them not to have put is back properly.

[Kate]

Thanks Iain

Does anyone know why the garage would have needed to remove the trim on the gear stick?

Thanks

Kate

[Oilburner]

You mean the trim in front of the gear stick? Underneath that is where the diagnostic/re-programming port is. It's routine to connect the computer to that and check for fault codes, no matter how obvious the problem is.

[Gav]

In case you don't know (unfortunately I've had a head gasket go), the signs apart from overheating are loss of coolant (since it goes into the engine oil), and oil going like mayonnaise. My experience also gave some problems starting and running rough, but didn't actually let me down.