How To Repair A Coolant Leak

If you've noticed an odd, sugariness aroma coming from your car afterward you close the engine off you lot might take an antifreeze leak. Antifreeze plays a central part in keeping your engine running properly, so it's important to know if it's leaking.

If your vehicle is leaking antifreeze, the problem needs to be repaired promptly, before it causes much bigger, more plush issues.

Despite its proper noun, antifreeze does more than just keep your vehicle'south radiator from freezing up in wintertime. It's part of your vehicle's cooling system, which controls the engine'south temperature and so that it runs properly and doesn't overheat.

Your engine's radiator is actually filled with what'southward called coolant, a 50-50 mix of antifreeze and water. A pump on the engine circulates the coolant through the radiator, engine, and heater and keeps your engine running at the proper temperature—and not overheating—regardless of the outside temperature. If an engine is low on coolant, it can run too hot, which will injure both performance and fuel economy. Worse yet, your engine tin overheat, sustaining expensive and possibly terminal damage.

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If your vehicle is losing coolant, you demand to determine where it's leaking from and how fast it's leaking—and so fix it or get it fixed. The engine's cooling system is circuitous and has many parts. A coolant leak could be as cheap and simple to repair as tightening a loose clamp on one of the system's several hoses—something you tin can do yourself. Or it can exist every bit complicated and expensive to repair as replacing a cleaved water pump. A major problem like that will require the skills of a technician to diagnose it and a shop full of tools to repair it.

Clues You Have an Antifreeze Leak

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• A sweet odour that you lot notice from outside the vehicle, coming from the vehicle after you've driven it. Yous might be able to smell it from behind the wheel as well.
• Puddles nether the auto of lime-green, orange, pinkish, or blue-green afterwards you've parked. Antifreeze makers use those dye colors to differentiate coolant from other fluids used in cars. Engine oil is golden or black (when muddied), and manual fluid is dark ruddy.
• The motorcar starts running hot or overheating.

How to Locate a Leak

• To find a leak, start bulldoze the auto until it's fully warmed upward, then park it on a clean, dry section of pavement—a driveway if possible.
• Shut information technology off and let it cool downward. Circumspection: When the vehicle is fully warmed up, the coolant is boiling hot and under pressure. Exercise not remove the recovery-tank cap or radiator cap before the engine has adequately cooled. They are located under the hood. The illustration below shows the location of the caps for the radiator and the translucent plastic recovery tank. Most recovery tank caps are marked with a symbol similar to the one shown. Some cars do not have a radiator cap.

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• After the car sits for 15 minutes, await under it for a fresh puddle of antifreeze-colored fluid. If at that place is no puddle but y'all aroma the sweetness olfactory property of antifreeze, kneel down and scan the vehicle'south underside and see if you can come across anything that'south wet or covered in droplets. Notation: air workout systems often grade condensation that tin can leak on to the ground, merely what's dripping from them is pure, articulate h2o.
• If a modest puddle or stain of coolant forms under the car near the forepart of the vehicle lift the hood and start looking in the engine bay. It'due south also a expert fourth dimension to literally sniff around to come across if you lot can tell where the antifreeze scent might exist coming from.
• Look for signs of coolant leakage—a low-cal-colored balance or stain—around the radiator cap, on hoses throughout the engine compartment (check the ends where they are clamped to other components) and on the radiator itself. If it looks similar a hose is leaking nigh a clamp, try tightening the clamp with a screwdriver. If you don't see any obvious signs of leakage, scan the entire engine compartment; the leak could be coming from somewhere else under the hood.
• If the smell is stronger inside your vehicle than outside of it, the problem could exist inside the heater. Heaters utilize a small radiator-like "core" to heat the cabin air. If the carpeting is clammy or the windows seem to fog upwards hands, the heater core could be leaking. Heater-core leaks are hard to locate and even harder to fix because the heater is function of the air conditioning arrangement, which is buried behind the instrument console. If that's the instance, unless you're groovy with wrenches run across a technician.

If You Can't Locate the Leak

Not finding the leak doesn't mean y'all don't have one. After the engine fully cools down, cheque your vehicle'due south coolant level past observing how much fluid is in your vehicle'southward coolant-recovery tank. The coolant-level indicator is on the side of the translucent plastic tank. Most tanks have clear minimum and maximum markings. The coolant level should exist between the "min" and "max" markings. If the tank is full, what you are smelling is probably not an antifreeze leak. If the tank's level is below the minimum mark or it's dry, you lot've likely got a trouble and it is fourth dimension to consult an expert technician. They can apply a cooling-system pressure tester to home in on the source of the leak.

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Driving With an Antifreeze Leak

How long can you drive with an antifreeze leak? We recommend getting it fixed equally soon as possible. Cooling system problems don't get better by themselves and tin can deteriorate fast. You don't want to be stranded past the side of the road because you ignored the early on signs of an antifreeze leak.

If you lot're the kind that pushes their luck and you have a a minor (slow) coolant leak and information technology's summertime, you tin can likely drive for a few days past topping off the cooling system with water whenever it gets low. Information technology's always all-time, withal, to refill a cooling system with the proper mix of antifreeze and water in a 50-l ratio, specially in winter. Plain water sitting in an engine on a freezing wintertime night turns to ice and expands. That expansion could easily burst the radiator, split up cooling system hoses, and fifty-fifty crack the engine block or a cylinder caput—which would destroy your engine. Antifreeze lowers the freezing point of the coolant to somewhere around minus 35 degrees F to go along whatever damage from happening. Again, it's far amend to get your motorcar looked at as before long as possible to prevent more serious and expensive engine damage.

Lastly, different cars crave different types of antifreeze. There are three main types of antifreeze: older-way ethylene glycol (dark-green dye); propylene glycol (orange or yellow dye); and the newest hybrid organic acid technology (yellowish, green, pink, blueish, violet, or orange). The different types can't exist mixed. Refer to your owner's manual or consult the dealer for the right replacement blazon.

Of import: Ethylene glycol antifreeze is highly toxic if ingested. Because of its sweet smell and inoffensive taste, it is a serious take a chance for children and pets.

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