Non obvious coolant leak.

[Zygee]

My regal runs real good now except there seems to be a non-obvious coolant leak.

I thought I fixed it when I replaced the water pump (when crawling under the car after refilling the radiator it was obviously leaking) but it still seems to be losing coolant somewhere :/. The hoses are all in good shape and I don't see any evidence underneath them that hoses are the problem.

If it doesn't hold what I put in earlier by the end of tomorrow I'm thinking it may possibly be a head gasket/head problem or possibly worse (hopefully not). I don't see smoke coming from anywhere when I let the engine sit and run or when I rev it up, but I don't know where else the leak could be.

I should be able to run a compression test to see if the head/head gasket is an issue right?

 

[ssn696]

Check your overflow reservoir and hose. When your car gets hot, pressure lifts the valve uder the cap and excess liquid goes int the catch can. When the car cools off, liquid can be sucked back in - that's why the hose goes to the bottom of the tank. My truck's tank had a crack on the side facing the radiator support. Hot coolant went in, left and air got sucked back in when the engine cooled. Drive me nuts for months. This may not be your problem, but it's an easy one to check.

Check your engine oil dipstick and make sure coolant isn't getting in there through the head gasket or oil cooler heat exchanger (if you have one in your radiator). That one most recently caused me major problems on my Blazer.

 

[Zygee]

Don't think that's my problem, thanks though. The reservoir seems to be in good order as is its hose. I'll do a compression test tomorrow and post results

 

[olds307 and 403]

I had coolant loss issues, found it leaking between the cores on a 2 core aluminum rad.

 

[pontiacgp]

what are you using for coolant?, I run distilled water and water wetter and had a leak in the aluminum rad that I could not find since the water evaporated without a trace. I pressurized the system to find it.

 

[Zygee]

I'm just using advanced auto parts off brand coolant

 

[Zygee]

o car mileage is 104k right now. It looks like it's holding the coolant now. I guess the coolant I put in the other day must have just gone through into the rest of the engine and that's why the resevoir got low to start with?

In any case, I was driving about 70mph across a bridge today and the temperature light came on. I turned on the heat and drove slow and the light turned off. The coolant was still good and full though. So now I'm at a different problem :/.

 

[BPTTONE420012]

possibly air in the system? did you run the car through a heat cycle with the cap off adding fluid as necessary?

 

[Zygee]

Yea I did. The resevoirand radiatorare both full and staying full now. I'm thinking the light may possibly be off whack? Bought an actual water temperature gauge that I'll put on tomorrow morning hopefully so I'm not just working with dummy lights.

Does anybody have a picture or something of where the best place to put the mechanical temperature gauge I bought or exactly where the dummy light screws into so I can put my actual gauge in its place?

 

[Zygee]

So I got the temperature gauge in and it gets up around 228 while going about 55mph before I decided to turn the heat on and out the windows down. In all fairness this was with just water and peak coolant flush stuff, but still. What temperature do these engines operate at? What is "overheating"/damage causing temperature?