Villiska

So, since I bought this car it's been eating coolant. However, it tends to only happen during the Winter which leads me to believe it's the heater core. The only thing stopping me from thinking this is that I don't have any condensation on my windshield, odors or any coolant leaking on my passenger side floor. Right now in this 15 degree weather, I'm going through a thing of high concentrated coolant about once every 3-4 weeks which is pretty bad. The fact I'm selling this car late Summer of 2015, makes me want to just pay the money for the coolant through the winter and avoid dealing with swapping the heater core because I hear it can be a pain in the butt. Not to mention I'd probably spend less on the coolant within the time of the Winter than I would on the heater core replacement part.

Does this sound like the heater core though? I'm not too experienced but that's the first thing that came to mind noticing the coolant being low in the Winter. In the Summer it would get low, but only once or twice max through the entire Summer and Fall.

What are some easy things and inexpensive things I could check first to make sure there isn't a coolant leak elsewhere? I'm not sure of which components are related to the cooling system.

Daehawk

From what Ive seen on tv if it was the heater core you'd know it. A lot more coolant than that would be pouring out of it and it would most likely be in the passenger floor board.

Since its not I'd check around the water pump, all hoses and their clamps, the radiator cap(especially this) and the over flow jug.

BabyGT

Find a big 'ol piece of cardboard and park the motor over it and let it sit overnight, then look under the car and see if anything dripped on the cardboard. Look above the drips to see where its coming from. Red fluid is power steering/trans fluid, black/brown is oil, those two will be on the thick side, green/clear is coolant and will be thinner.

Villiska

Update on my situation.

To start off, I found the coolant leak pretty much by accident. I was going to get lunch yesterday and when I was on my way back, I noticed my car's temperature gauge was all the way to hot. I pulled over and checked my coolant and it was at a normal amount which led me to believe it was the thermostat since I've been having an issue so far this Winter where my car's heat will start pushing out heat when the car is warmed up, but will have random spurts of cool air coming out for about 5 minutes at a time.

I swapped out the thermostat and when doing so, found that the old RVT the person before me used was completely worn at the bottom of the seal and I could see where coolant has been dripping out from it. I resealed it with RVT along with the thermostat cardboard gasket so it's extra sealed now and so far my coolant has remained at the same rate (for now).

Anyway, the heat isssue still persists while the temperature gauge issue is fixed from what I can tell. The car warms up faster now according to the gauge (so I guess the thermostat swap was a good thing, because it did look really bad before) but when the car reaches warm temperatures, it still blows cold air randomly for spurts of time. I usually turn it off because it's cold and I don't want to feel it, and turn it back on 3-5 minutes later and it's warm air again.

I'm not sure if this is worth mentioning, but for the past 2 months whenever I turn off my car after a nice drive to or from work, it sounds like a freaking bat mobile shutting off, like...a warping "VRRROOOooommm" sound and I can hear my fans slowly turning off with a ticking sound seeming to come from them.

Not sure if it's lifter tick or a tick in the fan but I only hear it when turning the car off.

Sorry for another rant, I just like to take care of this car and I want to keep her in the best shape I can.

BabyGT

Well the cold air blasts could be air in the heater core. When you ad coolant you need to start with the car off and cold, take the fill cap off, get back in the car, turn all the heat setting to full blast high fan max heat all that, now start the car, add coolant slowly till it wont take anymore, this will work all the air out of the heater core.

Villiska

Hey man, this car seriously hates me lately. It's just problem after problem (thankfully cheap fixes so far). I'll definitely do what you're saying with the heater core.

Anyway, the idle issue I think you've read in one of my threads before where it would start warm and idle really badly, has gotten worse. When I start the car now, once it's sat for about 30 seconds, the seat feels like it's vibrating subtly and my RPM's bounce from 600 to 800 back and fourth consistently. Even after driving it and being stopped at a red light, it still does it as soon as I stop all the way.

I noticed when I got out of my car to get my mail that I could hear a sputtering sound out of my right side exhaust which leads me to think it's a misfire. I'd instantly assume it's a spark plug and be relieved, but I changed those about 4 months ago so I can't imagine it being them. I used Motorcraft plugs and I also replaced all of the wires at the same time.

I'm praying it's not related to overfilling my oil that time and hopefully it isn't an extremely expensive issue or anything. Really just can't catch a break with this car.

PNYXPRESS

Overfilling the oil may be causing your idle issue.


But don't worry. It probably just caused more than normal oil to be sucked up into the pcv valve and gummed up the iac valve in the throttle body.

Villiska

I replaced my PCV valve 2 nights ago actually because it was cheap. The overfill of oil was about 3 weeks ago I would say, would it still be acting up because of this and progressively getting worse?

How do I go about resolving this? Wouldn't the puttering from the right side exhaust pipe indicate a misfire? I guess the biggest factor is for me to go and run the codes tomorrow morning and see if a misfire comes up. If it doesn't, then it isn't a misfire right? AKA my motor doesn't need replaced or something?

BabyGT

Check the iac, give us a list of everything you have ever replaced on the car.

Villiska

I'm not sure what an IAC is but off the top of my head, I've replaced these things this year:

- Spark Plugs
- Spark Plug Wires
- Fuel Filter
- PCV Valve
- Thermostat
- Tie Rods
- Air Filter (K&N 50k Mile re-cleanable)
- Switched to using K&N Oil Filters with anti-drain back because FRAM's were giving me issues with starting my car in the morning.
- Few bad fuses

Then I've done the following because I originally thought it was a dirty fuel system. I've ran 2 cans of seafoam through the fuel tank, ran 93 octane for the past 3 fill-ups (Plan to go back to 87 next tank) and I've got STP Fuel Injector Cleaner in it right now. All cleaners used with a full tank.

I don't plan on putting any more additives or cleaners in my fuel for a very long time. I know I overkilled it but after 2 seafoam runs with no success I heard STP was pretty good.