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leaking coolant?

C

CarpePoon

Hard-core CEG'er
Joined
Jan 5, 2002
Messages
1,905
Location
Grand Blanc, MI
Ok, this baffles me. Somehow my car is leaking anti-freeze, but only when shut off. And I believe only when cold as well.
The car runs fine, and does not loose a drop of coolant while running, even on 200+ mile trips. I can park it and then move it 20 minutes later and there will not be a drop on the ground.
But if I park it overnight and let it cool down. I wake up to this the next morning.
DSC09967.jpg
It even makes rivers down the cracks in my garage. I think it loses about 1 cup or so of coolant every thime.
By the time I am able to jack the car up, theres nothing left other than some evidence of dried coolant running down my splash guard, but I cant tell where its coming from. Anybody have any ideas?
 
is there any evidence of coolant in the engine bay or is it in the lower half of the engine bay?
 
Sounds familiar, but this is only a possibility. I had a similar problem when I was commuting 60 miles (round-trip) everyday, every 2-3 days and out of no where my low coolant light would come on until I was really leaking coolant bad. It wound up being the little heater hose that is at the bottom of the water pump assembly and it was a royal PITA to do, but I did it on the ground, with the scissor jack in the trunk :nonono: holding the car up with whatever tools I had in my car :help:, and the auto part store gave me the wrong clamps :mad:, so it didn't really work too well, but I got it fixed.

Suggestions I could give is to park the car somewhere flat overnight and get a good look at where it's coming from. Other than that, see if you can get access to a lift and idle the car in the air and look for it like that. Chances are you are dripping coolant while you are driving as the leak is working on letting itself be known. Also be careful not to overheat because these temp gauges seem to work slow sometimes, I usually go by low coolant light because that thing is pretty sensitive in my SVT, a few drops under, parked on a hill and the light comes on (this depends on your year of course).
 
A failing seal on the water pump nose can do that too. This can happen on most any car. The leak is out the weep hole and may look all the world like a bad lower hose on some cars (not ours, different hose routing configurations). Look for traces of or evidence of the pump leaking in the pulley area. Yes, that is how the pump failed on my car with roughly 150,000 miles on the pump.
 
Reason you are not seeing it on hot engine is because it is probably evaportive form on exit and it is a slow escape.
W#hen it cools you get the typical drip. I bet a hose is ruptured or the radiator has a small leak. Pressurize the radiator
and start looking for leaks.
 
I put a rag under the water pump when I got home today. I'll see if its soaked in the morning. Hopefully its not a radiator leak.
 
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