I was driving down from Sunrise at Mt. Rainier yesterday when the "add coolant" buzzer sounded intermittenly. The car was running ok, temps normal (actually a little cool, about 1/4 above C), so I continued down to the bottom of the mountain.

I pulled into a parking lot, and checked the resevoir (dipstick). The coolant was a little dirty (some black deposits), but it was full, and there were no leaks.

I was feeling adventurous so I drove back up the mountain...nothing, no warnings at all. I went hiking for a few hours. On the drive down, the add coolant buzz came on again for about a minute and then went away and I haven't heard it since.

I just had a shop replace my stock radiator with a fluidyne radiator a couple of weeks back, and the car was great until this little anomaly. My baby's a '94 R2, with a DP and RB dual-tip cat-back.

So, what you do rotary gurus think?

Thanks for the help.

 

What is the coolant level in the filler neck? I mean the one right next to the alternator...

 

You have air in your coolant system. Fill it and burp it.

 

Yep, next time, let the car cool and check the level in the filler neck:



If that's low, that's why the buzzer is going off... If it's not low, it could just be air in the system.

 

At what level should the coolant be at the filler neck? I just checked and the coolant appears to be about 3 inches below the rim.

 

A 1/4 above C?? Does C stand for center on the stock gauge? If it does and your stock gauge was not linearized then it is way too high. With a coolant temp of 200F my gauge shows slightly below center.
Do the bubble test. Take the filler neck cap off when the car is cool and cracnk the car up and run it till operating temp and look to see if there are any fine bubbles rising in the coolant. If there is, do a seach for rebuild, sorry.

 

"A 1/4 above C?? Does C stand for center on the stock gauge? If it does and your stock gauge was not linearized then it is way too high. With a coolant temp of 200F my gauge shows slightly below center.
Do the bubble test. Take the filler neck cap off when the car is cool and cracnk the car up and run it till operating temp and look to see if there are any fine bubbles rising in the coolant. If there is, do a seach for rebuild, sorry."


It wasn't that bad, 1/4 above COLD (bottom of the gauge). What should the coolant level be when the engine's not running?

 

My level is to the top of the filler neck. If it's low, thats where the coolant level sensor is located which is why you are getting the buzzer.

Do the "bubbles test" as described above. If you don't get the "bubbling champaigne bubbles", then you may only need to replace your coolant and AST caps. If you do get the bubbles, your coolant seals are gone.

 

Make sure that you fill the coolant up to the rim of the filler neck before you screw the cap back on. Also make sure that your AST is filled to the top with fluid as well. The over flow tank (located behind the pasanger headlight) should be 1/4 the way below the full mark.

 

same thing happened to me, just air in the system, which means you need to add coolant or just burp it, just like everyone else here said.

 

When I got my fluidyne, it took a little longer to burp the system than usual.