Coolant Loss

[Kevin R.]

Okay, I am confused on this one.

About 2 months ago I was leaking coolant, noticably on the garage floor, etc. We figured it was the water pump and changed it out.

Now, I am losing coolant, low coolant light came on today.

No noticable leaks or anything except a few drips of oil here and there.

Where is it going!?

Any ideas?

 

[Swarzkopf]

Could be "burning" coolant, ie a gasket has failed somewhere and coolant is entering either the crankcase or combustion chambers. This could be a headgasket that is minorly blown, or a leakly lower intake gasket.

Check your oil for signs of coolant. Also make sure you don't have white smoke coming from your tailpipes.

 

[juiced_94gt]

timing cover gasket is leaking fluid on mine.

 

[juiced_94gt]

timing cover gasket is leaking fluid on mine.

leaking coolant that is

 

[94-302-vert]

My radiator drips from time to time, sometimes quite significant.

 

[MLC Stang]

Kevin R.

Our cars are notorious for developing a very slow leak on the passenger side of stock radiators, between the radiator core and the radiator end cap down low on that side.

It’s hard to see, and hard to diagnose, since it it’s a very slow leak and the leak mostly drips down onto the cross-member directly under the radiator, burns off, and never makes it to the garage floor.

Until I fixed that, my car had the symptom of a low coolant light every month or so, and some mild overheating when coming off of a long freeway run and getting back into slow city street traffic.

If yours is a slow leak, this might be it. If its a bigger leak than that, its' probably somewhere else.

 

[BlownFiveLiter]

If you don't see any telltale signs of burning coolant (white smoke), you could always look into putting a dye in your radiator, and running the car for a bit, checking periodically for the dye having leaked out somewhere. My 95 has had this problem since I've owned it, and I've honestly never looked too far into it, I just keep topping off the coolant. It's really never had any overheating problems, so my logic was that I'll just leave it alone until I do some upgrades.

 

[mo_dingo]

yeah, make sure your oil isn't a milkshake b/c that could be where it's going.
Scott

 

[Kevin R.]

Thanks as always.

Will check out the radiator. If not, I may just leave it alone as it isn't significant.

Not overheating and coolant is cheap so..