Coolant Overflow Tank Blew
 

On the way to the ball park last night to watch the Dbacks get spanked by the Rockies... :wallbash:

Got out of the game, go to my car and there's fluid on the ground. Pop the hood, low on coolant. Fill it up, start it up, no leaks. Drive it home watching my commander temps, they're fine.

Get home and take a closer look and it looks like the filler neck on top of the tank has cracked and it's wet where I think the coolant came out while hot.

Anyway, can someone point me to a write up on how to get to it and replace it? It's right behind the headlight and buried!

Any help is appreciated!!!

get a metal ast

It's not the AST tank. The overflow tank is what cracked and leaked. The AST is fine.

If you remove the front passenger wheel, you should have access to it after to pull back the fender liner.

The filler neck simply pops into the tank, it's by no means water tight. Coolant should not be reaching the top of the tank unless it was overfilled to begin with.

Great! Thanks Mahjik! I knew someone would know how to get to it!

Now I have to call Ray and get a new one!

Mine cracked at the bottom of the neck so it had to go.

Just got one from ray (around $85) and put it in the way Mahjik said. You may want to replace the hose when your down there. Get a couple extra fender liner plastic rivits too..

RXcetera, thanks for that info. Maybe it was overfilled and when the coolant got hot and got into the overflow, it just came out the top of the neck? That makes more sense.

After I get the radiator topped off again, is there a full line on the overflow tank to tell me if it's full or not?

It does look like the coolant came from the neck/tank joint. If it's not water tight, then if the coolant get up to that joint, wouldn't it come out there? I think so...

It would come out of there or out the overflow vent which is on top of the tank (near the neck). It'll pretty obvious how it works when the liner is off the car and you can get a good look at it.

You should set the level in the tank with the dip stick attached to the bottom of the cap.

Great. I'll take a look at it even closer when I get home tonight from work. It will be nice and cold when I get home. The wife dropped me off today cause I wasn't exactly sure what was wrong with it.

Thanks for everyones help!

Check your coolant level at the filler neck. If it is low, you may have a bad engine coolant seal. I had the same issue. Coolant overflowing from the overflow tank. The bad seal allows combustion gas into the cooling system. This gas pushes the coolant out of the system, and into the overflow tank, which eventually overflows.

I hope this isn't your problem, but it meant rebuild time for me ............ at only 62,000 miles.

Adam

Thanks Adam. I hope that's not it. My car has 33k miles on it now, all original, but it would suck to have to rebuild it now!!!

Same coolant seal problem happened to me :(... that's why I know about this stuff

Man, I really hope it's not a coolant seal!

How do I test for that if it is? Assuming I get the coolant system back to normal levels and everything working right, how do I know if a coolant seal is going?

I have no smoke during startup or anything like that. What else can I do?

Coolant system pressure test.

Steve,

In my case, the car started great, ran great, and didn't smoke. Then suddenly, it started overflowing after I replaced a bad t-stat. It still started, & ran fine, with no smoke. An exhaust gas test was inconclusive. My feeling is that one of the seals had a breach rather than a slow leak. The mechanic said that the seal was bad on the front. I'll know more when I get the car back.

Thanks Adam. Please let me know when you get your car back as to what you find out.

When I checked the car out this morning, my overflow tank was on L, so I filled it up to F. Then I topped off the filler neck of the radiator which was a little low from the drive the other night.

I plan on taking it out here shortly to see how it behaves.

Monitor both levels (check 'em with the engine completely cold) over the next few days to see how it's doing. You might not have a problem at all... :fingersx:

The "recovery tank" should be at the full mark when the engine is cold. As long as your tank is not leaking and will hold coolant to the full mark on the dipstick then it doesn't matter if the neck is cracked, broken or even gone. (the full mark is well below that level. You need to find out if your recovery tank is overly full and if so, then why the coolant is going into it and not being drawn back into the cooling system.

You said the car was all original. Would that include the caps ? Check the condition of the cap seals as this could cause th coolant to move to the recovery tank and not back into the system. It would also allow for lower pressure and easier to boil at a lower temperature.

I'm pretty sure the caps are all original. They seems ok to me, but maybe I'll change them just to be sure.

I took it out today and drove surface streets. I'll check the levels tomorrow morning to see where they are.

I was checking the coolant hose that's on the passanger side of the car. It seems really soft to me. Could that hose be collapsing and restricting flow? I can't see the other hose or I'm not looking in the right location.

Has anyone done aluminum pipes for both coolant hoses from the radiator to the car? It might help disapate heat better then the rubber ones. Does anyone sell them ready to install?

If your coolant hoses are the original ones, its time to replace them. They are 14 years old now. Just use the OEM hoses.

Ok, thanks everyone. I'll order some new caps and hoses and get them replaced ASAP.

What is the t-stat set too temp wise? What's the car supposed to be running at under optimal conditions?

My car runs between 85-90 C all the time. If I'm not moving, it will creap up to 97C pretty quickly and then if I start moving again, come back down to around 90 no problem, but it won't go below that no matter what.

Driving into work this morning, it's 65F outside, my office is 5 miles away, surface streets, not stop and go, just hit a couple of stop lights, but then got right through them the first time. By the time I got to work, the car is at 90C and then driving through my parking garage, it reaches 93C before I shut it off.

I'm running 80/20 mix, water wetter, Koyo Rad. I checked the fluids this morning before starting it and everything was full. I just don't get it. WTF?
Now, I'm just venting...

i'm having somewhat of the same problem as you are but i think right now well i have my fingers crossed is that i overfilled my car with coolant and what's happening is that the coolant is bubbling over from the coolant overflow tank there's a little breather/opening on the overflow tank and it just sort of bubbles over but when i went to a meet today it completely leaked most of my coolant out and the buzzer light came on if all else fails i'm gonna do a coolant system flush and make sure everything is topped off properly http://www.fd3s.net/cooling.html click on that link i'm sort of running through the methods on that site and hopefully something good will happen