flash_xx

Ok, so I was just cleaning my catch can, the battery poles, etc. and I see that my coolant reservoir is empty. I had some distilled water and started pouring and it took 1.5 gallons of water! The car has not overheated, runs fine, no misfires or signs of coolant in the oil or anywhere around the engine. Tomorrow morning I'll take out the sparkplugs and use my borescope to check if any of the cylinders shows signs of coolant. The thing that worries me is that neither the coolant gauge or my OBD interface using torque app showed elevated temperature. I was planning to replace the water pump, so I guess I'll check the coolant sender at the same time just in case and get analog gauges for oil pressure, oil temperature and coolant temperature.

How much coolant does the system take, for it to be missing 1.5 gallons and not overheat? I have an aftermarket 3 row radiator.

Dino Dino Bambino

It's 14.2 quarts or 13.4 liters, so you were only missing about 10% of the cooling capacity.

Urambo Tauro

4.2 quarts is about 3.5 gallons. Having the system be low by 1.5 gallons is not insubstantial.

TBH, I really would have expected it to overheat under such conditions. A sensor check would be wise. I would go ahead and disable the radiator fan and let the engine warm up. Don't let it go all the way into overheat, but at least confirm that the car is sensing the elevating temperature.

dawson1112

lol 4.2 quarts is just over 1 gallon.

Urambo Tauro

DOGGONE IT!

LOL, I go to make an important correction and end up with a typo myself. That is just too funny!

Ah geez, I meant 14.2 gallons, er, make that quarts haha.

flash_xx

This is so annoying, the car is not burning coolant as far as I can tell. I used a borescope to look and see no signs of coolant in the cylinders. There's no coolant in the oil or ground either. Spark plugs all look exactly the same, yet coolant level is still going down. I thought it might be a fissure in the reservoir that only leaks when hot and the coolant evaporates before hitting the ground, but I drove the car hard, opened the hood and saw no leak or smelled any coolant. I don't want to put any leak stopper in the cooling system (that's a hack way to go about it) but taking the heads off is not something I look forward to.

At this rate I will have to take the heads off and check before any serious damage occurs, but before that I'll replace all the hoses, thermostat and reservoir and get the Edelbrock water pump for extra cooling on track days.

I'm open to suggestions on how to detect leak.

flash_xx

Upon further research it seems there's a possibility it's leaking between the manifold and heads? I jusr ordered a set of new gaskets and will take off the intake manifold (which I planned to do anyway to clean and hydrodip) and check if that's the source of the leak. Fingers crossed.

Derf00

If you can do a cooling system pressure test with the car cold you should find the leak easier instead of just replacing the gaskets. I don't know if auto parts stores in the DR offer rental services for tools?

flash_xx

Nope, I was looking into getting a set, but honestly, for a one time job it's kind of expensive.

Dino Dino Bambino

The heater pipe runs from front to back in the valley of the V, and a coolant leak there can be hard to spot. Removing the intake manifold would reveal it.

LOL, I misread your first post and thought 1.5 quarts instead of 1.5 gallons (6 quarts). Yeah, losing nearly half of your coolant should have caused some overheating but the coolant temp. gauge sending unit might give false readings if it's immersed in a pocket of steam.