Just started to get my car ready for summer and I moved the ast over to where the battery used to be and put in an M2 large intercooler. That being said before I put the car away from the summer it was blowing out smoke of the tail pipe on idle which I thought was the turbos since they were not boosting past 8 psi and the smoke did not smell like coolant. The vacuum and idle were all fine....

So I relocated the AST and refilled the car with coolant. I then noticed that there was coolant all over the ground comming from the coolant bottle by the passenger side fender. The bottle was full though so I thought it was just overflow. I started up the car and slowly coolant was leaking on the floor. I figured I would let it warm up till the thermostat opened up, about 90 C. At about 90-92 I shut the car off because coolant was pouring all over the floor from the black over flow valve on the bottle. It was litterly shooting out of black valve and I immidetly opend the t housing cap and smoke was comming out. The car hit 100 C on the power fc after I shut it off. I left the fans on to try to help cool it down a little. Any ideas what could be wrong? Possibly a blown coolant seal or something else minor before I start to jump to conclusions?

 

sounds like a seal to me, kinda like mine right now. when its warmed it starts to leak coolent out from the overflow.

 

Champagne test!

(Basically open cap, run car, if you keep seeing bubbles, it's the coolant seal).

How hard is it to just change a coolant seal? (More time than money).

 

I can't do the Champagne test, every time I put in coolant it just drains right out of the overflow valve onto the floor if the car is on or off so the cap never has a noticable amount of liquid in it. Would a kink in the AST line cause the tank to overflow? I will have to check all the lines tomorrow. I just find it odd that the car was running fine and then all the sudden throws coolant all over the place.
I would change the coolant seal but I don't have the space to pull the engine. So in my case its going to cost me more money than time.
I was reading that I can turn the engine by hand with the spark plugs out to see if its a seal. I think tomorrow I willl try that unless somone else has a better idea.

 

Sounds more like a bad or dirty AST cap (not sealing). As soon as the engine gets warm, the coolant will boil and exactly what you had will occur.

 

It could also be that there was a big air pocket left in the engine, and the fans are not giong on since the thermoswitch is in the air pocket.

However, since the overflow started right away while you were filling the system, it is much more likely that either the AST cap is bad, or, less likely, you hooked the AST up wrong (bottom AST nipple incorrectly plumbed to the OF tank?), and the coolant does not have to get by the AST cap to get to the OF bottle.

Dave

 

Ok so after last night I decided to refill the coolant and try again before I started to pull the plugs. Now the car is still leaking some coolant out of the overflow bottle but its all the way up the stick when I check it so I would expect that. The car won't get above 87 C now... I guess the ast cap was not screwed on all the way when I relocated it. I let the car run for about 15 mintues with no problems. Thanks for the help. Hopefully I won't have any more issues minus the bad turbos now.

 

Great! Love the simple fixes!

Dave

 

So I thought my issue was fixed but it isn't. If I fill the car up with coolant and drive it around, everything is rock solid. The car never goes above 87C and doesn't leak anything.... When I shut it off though coolant starts to pour out of the overflow bottle (about a gallon).
Could this have to do with the height of the ast and where I placed it at in the car when I relocated it or possibly with the size of the lines I used when I relocated it?

 

 

I did the champagne test after I got the previous issue fixed. I don't get any little bubbles but maybe 1 or 2 at start up. I will take a video of it tomorrow and post. As far as i can tell the line does not have any leaks in it as there is not coolant anywhere else...

 

Still sounds to me like a bad AST cap as I mentioned in my previous posts...