When I fill the coolant tank, at some point you can hear the coolant running out onto the floor.

No problems with overheating, no coolant light yet.

Since the tank is hard to see (below the headlight), is there an easy way to find where the leak is coming from.

My dipstick is next to impossible to read, so I can't tell exactly at what level the coolant starts leaking.

thanks for any help

 

If you are low on coolant, that's not where you should be adding it. The coolant expansion tank has a hole near the neck. Coolant will leak out of this hole when its overfilled.

 

... Or when you have a blown coolant seal, and exhaust gases pressurize the coolant system thus forcing coolant out the overflow. Hopefully that is not the case. For now just refill the filler neck where the sensor is, and keep an eye on it.

 

Most likely the filler neck has cracked away from the bottle and is leaking out when you pour in the coolant. This happened to me. The bottle is easily acessed by jacking up/ placing on stands the front and removing the passenger front wheel. Pop out the plastic rivits and pull back the wheel well shroud. Three bolts hold the tank in place and there is a short hose that mates up to another hose that routes across to the AST. Have someone pour in coolant and see where its leaking from.
The recovery bottle was like $85 from Malloy. It comes with a short hose attached that connects to the AST hose under the intakes.

 

If this was the case then would you see any idle problems of drivability problems?

Would the spilt coolant have traces of oil/fuel?

How much would it leak?



Thanks a lot.


=Ben

 

I went through same problem on the weekend. Turns out I had a bad AST cap which in turn didnt hold pressure.

What that meant was the filler neck was always low so the more coolant I added, the more it just went straight into the overflow bottle and spilled out on the floor.
Under normal circumstances, the coolant should remain at the same level at the filler neck, but as soon as you open the cap on the AST, it will start sucking it down.

Same situation here, check your AST cap and make sure it doesn't have a leak. You might also want to do the champagne test while your at it.