88 gxl na, got a coolant leak in the back of the motor near trany. Been looking to see if i'm running hot by this forums standards and cant find the thread i read two days ago so

1. Is my car at 25% or 50% for water temp (this ones at 50 right now and i drove all 50 miles)

2.is my external leak just hose related or the water seal? (not sure if this seal is inside housing after reading the other post)

thanks for any help, right now my educated guess is its the hose where i have to take the throttle body off, but its dark and there isn't enough fluid coming out to check i just here the darn thing boiling everytime i cut the car off and i got a little puddle under the car. i'll check for the leak in the morning.

 

Looking in daylight hours will definitely help out.

One of the gurus is better suited to answering questions. I own a S5 JDM TII so my setup is slightly different than yours....but I'll do what I can. I doubt it's a water seal leak, but I'm open to being flamed for saying so. I believe water seal leaks will leak the coolant into your combustion chambers. Though I guess if you've cracked a housing badly enough coolant would leak straight out of it. I'm betting it's a hose, much more likely that than your engine needs a rebuild.

http://www.rx7city.co/88manual2.htm

There's a link to a FSM you can start checking through. Off the top of my head, there is also your BAC hose that feeds into the back of your throttle body.

As for the OEM water temp gauge being 50%, that seems pretty normal. If you drove 50 miles with this leak and your coolant level warning buzzer didn't go off then your pretty ok. You'll know when the coolant level warning goes off cause it is loud enough and constant enough to make you want to hurt defenseless animals. Hell it's loud enough for other cars and pedestrians to hear it going off.

I hope this helped.

 

yeah it did help. i looked further into the water leak situation on the forums and the location of the leak seems to be similar to the one i thought and you stated (the BAC hose) i looked this morning and i didn't see any puddle under the car but when my friend drove it last night i saw one, i tried adding fluid only to make a mess cause i took both caps off and added fluid and the more i added in one it got pushed out the other so i think the fluid level really didn't drop, its about the same amount of fluid you see when someone is using the ac. What is the function of the BAC? After driving my first two days i went from weak idle to the car fighting to stay on half the time to the car having strong idle half the time, i hope that hose getting fixed solves my idle as well, or maybe its just the fact the car sat so long that the driver side muffler fell off on the first test drive of the car.

 

The BAC is a idle control valve and TRIES to hold the rpms at approx 750rpm at idle even when you put a load on the engine by loading up the alternator by turning lights, heater etc on.

The water hose connected to the side of the throttle body is there to keep the BAC valve from icing up during cold weather. It does not enter the valve itself. That water is coming from the rear rotor housing.........to the trottle body........out the throttle body to the nipple on the side of the BAC........leaves the fitting on the side of the BAC and goes into the back of the water pump housing to return to the radiator.

 

S4 cars typically run at 1/4 on the gauge, which is about 86 degrees. Half is around 92 degrees.

 

i'm starting to think my thermostat sticks a little, the car was at 1/3 all day then i cut it off. Cranked back up to hit the highway and it was at 40% for a 20 min ride then i got home and it stayed at around 35, this was another 50 mile day. Idle got better on its own and only cut off once. Day 4 for me owning the car.

 

with that small of a difference should i show concern? I've just been keepin an eye on the temp for now, and my god does it take like 2 years for this thing to warm up? whats the usual high speed idle cause mine usually chills around 1800 and does a 2500 rpm spike on crank up instead of the 3000 one i've read about.

 

so i did some shopping with the wife today and at start up we were cruising at 25% water temp then on the way home it hit 50 again but this time smoke came from the windshield defrost vent. So right now i think my leak is inside the heater core so since this weekend is valentines day i'll look into next week. Anyone think i'm right or wrong about this please post for my own reassurance. Thanks

 

Not to threadjack or anything but my gauge usually sits at about 40-50 (about halfway up) is that bad?
What should I do to remedy that problem?

 

turned heat off this week and the temp stayed around 20-25% so the heater core was the problem, and the thermostat did stick once this week so replacing that as well. I bought an oem superstant from advance auto parts for 12 bucks and found a heater core on ebay for 45. The stant is for 180 degrees and the guy told me the superstant just has a thicker wall than the regular stant and comes with a lifetime warranty.

 

what year and model?

 

it's an 87 base

 

So it's a S4 which means the gauge should normally run at about 1/4.

If you have any question about water temp, the very first thing you should do is put in a real temp gauge and start looking at real numbers instead of this 1/4, 1/2 nonsense.

 

General cooling system troubleshooting:
http://www.aaroncake.net/rx-7/cooling.htm

 

<3

I just thought about something I read on mazdatrix a while back. I removed my airpump and do not have a dual belt setup yet, could this be contributing to my high temps due to slippage? also where can I get matched length belts?

 

The problem i had was the hose on the drivers side going into the heater core, i loosened it while i was trying to put my slave on and made a laceration in it when i tightened it back, i moved the clamp farther down the line and re tightened it and now i've been sitting at 25% and i took the stant back and got my money for it. Made a 5 hour 250 mile trip the other day and its still running like a champ, just a lot cooler now. Thanks for the help everyone.