Obsequious1

If you have coolant leaking near the back of the engine, it could also be a freeze plug.

ripped camel

What's that and where is it located?

PaintballFreak

Good luck finding the solution.. I had this issue almost exactly. I was leaking coolant that was evaporating on the passenger side cat. There was also a ton of it on the top of the block. I though for sure it had to be the intake manifold so I replaced it only to find it had no crack and only the gaskets were torn up on the driver side. When I got it all back together I had a serious engine knock.

I'm guessing either coolant got sucked into the cylinder heads and caused the bent valve or something just really wrong happened to the engine when it first got the leak since I did a pull through first and second. I was very careful not to drop anything in the heads during the install. I'm still at a loss as to what happened but I gave up and took it to a shop once I heard the knocking.

Hope you fare better than I did but what I would have done if I could redo everything was to fill the coolant res back up and get it started. If it's a steady leak you can try to find it while it is happening. Since I didn't do that, I don't know for sure if it was knocking from the beginning. Good luck man...

JD

mustangman281

Do you have longtubes? Mine burned one of my A/C lines. If its coolant you would know by the sweet smell.

ripped camel

Yes, I have BBK longtubes. I can't tell if it's antifreeze or not. Because I live in Florida I dilluted my antifreeze to a 60 distilled water / 40 antifreeze with a bottle of redline water wetter. I don't have to worry about my coolant freezing over since I live in Florida so I opted for a more concentrated water mixture to get lower operating temps. That mixed with the water wetter nets me low op temps.

Problem is I can't tell if it's antifreeze or not dripping out because of how dilluted it is.

How could I find if it burned an A/C line, and is it necessary to fix since I don't ever use A/C?

Obsequious1

Taste it, if it tastes sweet than its antifreeze, but don't drink it !=))

penceman

I had a bad coolant leak a couple of months ago and it turned out to be a bad gasket. It was leaking in the rear corner of the manifold, where the coolant tube is.