The Mystery of the Missing Coolant

[Tim]

I was doing some work on my '89 Auto today and went to check the fluids, which were where they are supposed to be, except for the coolant. It was down by maybe a quart and a half, and the overflow tank was dry.

Since I bought the car in October, it hasn't lost a drop of coolant until now. What was in the radiator at the time seemed to be mostly water with a little antifreeze, judging from the color. I drove it all winter like this without a problem.

Recently it's started to warm up, and the car has reached full operating temperature for what literally seems like the first time. Last time I checked the fluids, a few weeks ago, the coolant level was fine, so I'm wondering if the change in weather has anything to do with this.

My car has no coolant leaks that I can find, it doesn't overheat and the radiator cap looks OK, yet the level was down a lot. Could some of the water have evaporated on me? Can anyone explain where my coolant went, other than a leak somewhere?


Thanks!


-Tim

[FB71]

pull the spark plugs and look for any that are unusually clean. I've had engines with slow coolant consumption, due to a head gasket weeping into a cylinder, with no driveability symptoms.

Oh, and check the trans fluid. The trans cooler could be ruptured (doubtful).

[jglutz]

You need to check for excessive white smoke at a cold start up....a head gasket can start to erode such that coolant leaks into the cylinder at nght when the engine gets cold.

If the system was mostly water...a loss in level should be expected...water could boil beore the rad cap allows over flow...and insted of expandind fluid into the overflow tank...the circuit is steaming into the overflow....the problem just showed up because the weather is getting warmer.

[ejp2fast]

i assume your oil was ok, and it didn't have a watery mix to it...
Add more H2O, and watch all fluid levels often, to see if there is an fluid swappage.

[KingFish]

I had the same issue with Bruce. I never figured it out till I cleaned the engine bay. I found a pin hole weep from the head on the back side on the driver side. Never would have seen it if not for cleaning the bay...

[Tim]

Tranny fluid is full and red. The oil is full and brown, and the car has never smoked.

I'll be checking the spark plugs soon, since they're overdue for replacement anyway.

Thanks to you all for the excellent advice! I will (eventually) report back with my findings.


-Tim

[GenevaDirt]

Tranny fluid is full and red. The oil is full and brown, and the car has never smoked.

I'll be checking the spark plugs soon, since they're overdue for replacement anyway.

Thanks to you all for the excellent advice! I will (eventually) report back with my findings.


-Tim

Oil shouldn't be brown.....if it is a true brown and not the natural color of oil that you are calling brown I would have someone look at it....or get a pressure tester and make sure there are no leaks.

[sanjeet]

I had a problem detected with my festy and water was leaking from a steel pipe under the engine, the problem was the leak was only obvious when the car was warmed up and it never had any tell tale leak when parked up, when I inspected the pipe the inside was as clean as a whistle, however the outside had a tell tale rust spot that had rusted through enough to leak when hot and I'm glad it was spotted early

[jglutz]

Oil shouldn't be brown.....if it is a true brown and not the natural color of oil that you are calling brown I would have someone look at it....or get a pressure tester and make sure there are no leaks.

Good Point! Brown like pushing Tan is not good.

Pressure test is always a great thing to do or have done....I'm not a fan of going more than 15-16PSI....anymore could create a problem in an old car. As long as the rad cap is in good shape...there's no reason to use excessive pressure.

[sanjeet]

Maybe some help a video from utube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEdtHZwLKZ8&feature you can cut and paste I will have to learn how to create a link

[sanjeet]

Well it worked and the link is ok so click on. it a basic instruction for looking after a radiator and coolant level

[5.0zone]

Mine radiator was leaking between the black pastic end cap and the aluminum part of the radiator. I replaced the radiator, not sure if there is a fix for this.

[Tim]

Well my radiator is all brass and it doesn't seem to leak... knock on wood.

The oil is the normal golden brown color. I don't think any coolant has made it into the oil though. However, in the case of a small leak, wouldn't it be more likely that oil gets into the coolant, due to the oil pressure being much higher?

Going to get it pressure tested after I replace the spark plugs with som NGKs I picked up yesterday.

-Tim

[gotrootdude]

I had a problem detected with my festy and water was leaking from a steel pipe under the engine, the problem was the leak was only obvious when the car was warmed up and it never had any tell tale leak when parked up, when I inspected the pipe the inside was as clean as a whistle, however the outside had a tell tale rust spot that had rusted through enough to leak when hot and I'm glad it was spotted early

Had a similar problem here. It turned out to be a small itty-bitty pin hole in the hose leading to the heater core. Took over a week before we could find the leak (weren't running the heater). We went ahead and replaced every hose just in case.

[Gforcefd]

There is a small hose on behind the distributor that goes to the inside middle of my intake on the B6, I think the B3 has a similar hose. It looked fine, but when the car was running and sitting on concrete you could see a really slow drip, turned out that hose had a hole right by the clamp holding it on so it was hard to find. If your oil looks fine and your coolant that is still in the tank doesn't have oil in it I would be check all the hoses. Also on my BP the heater core hoses that go through the firewall always had a constanst leaking problem unless they were seated really well. Just trickled down the firewall.