Can someone help me find my leak. I feel like I’m always filling up my coolant. But there is no coolant on the ground.
Where are the possible places that I can look at or where are the places that my engine could be consuming it?
I’m tired of having to pull over on the side to top off.
S8 with 110k miles
The first place to start with this would be how often do you have to top off the coolant and how much are you needing to add each time. There are several siuations that can be the cause but knowing that part might help in getting in the right direction
I would say that it is at least once a month and the coolant reservoir is pretty dry. So 1/4 of the bottle each time.
Coolant issues have been my biggest problem with my car, seems like it’s always drinking coolant for one reason or another. Although I’ve had pretty good luck for the past 6 months or so, knock on wood.
Most of my leaks have been pretty obvious, though. The radiator was spraying coolant out my grill at one point, another time the expansion tank was gushing coolant out the bottom, and another time I had a leaking hose somewhere (a local mechanic found and fixed that one). JHM also replaced a few coolant lines during my overhaul there. The problem seems to be that the coolant system in these cars runs at a significantly higher pressure than most, and aging coolant components seem to fail frequently around 100-125k miles.
The first thing I would do, since it’s only like $8 and 30 seconds of labor, is buy a new expansion tank cap from an auto parts store. There’s a gasket in there, and when it fails it will cause hot coolant to come out the bottom of the tank. Also check the plastic Y-fitting behind the expansion tank, replace it with a brass fitting if it looks fragile.
This sounds like a pretty significant leak. I’ve had all the parts fail that c.scott mentioned, expansion tank hairline cracks, expansion tank cap, broken y-pipe, various hoses, and a fracture of the radiator which dumped all the coolant on the road in about a minute. All of these always resulted in a visible puddle on the ground. And for all except the radiator failure, I wasn’t loosing as much coolant as you are. I would guess that you’ve got to be burning coolant. Do you have that sweet burning coolant smell coming from the exhaust?