Jehu
09-04-2007, 02:38 PM
`Good News/Bad/News kind of thing i think. I appear to have gotten the Heater valves to function using the trusty "wail on it with a wrench" method.Now I can switch between heat and AC and get both on demand and no coolant smell in the cabin. I thought i was in heaven until i was gassing up as a Sunoco and saw coolant on the ground.. near the back of the engine bay. I had this happening before I bypassed the core believing the coolant was leaking into the air-box and mixing with AC condensation then dripping out those vent pipes.
Flashing back to a few months ago when i thought i needed to replace the Blower Motor and had the EXPANSION TANK off the firewall but still connected to the hoses just kind of propped up on the Intake Manifold when my Hood blew down on it . Thereafter i believed it had been cracked and was leaking coolant but it seemed to have stopped or maybe i just never looked carefully enough but here you can see it appears there is coolant leaking somehow from the tank. I can see it dripping so that coolant in the pic was not overflow or spillage it was dripping as i photographed. I was just at the Dealership getting some new O-Rings assuming i needed to refit them and would have to tear everything apart again but i wasn't smelling any coolant in the cabin. I even took it by an auto shop and had a mechanic lend me his nose. He said he definitely didn't smell any coolant in the cabin and he would have if it were there.
Puzzled since i thought i was seeing coolant leaking mixed with condensation from inside the Air Box i aimed the open engine bay into the bright sunshine and found this leaking at the Tank... Much easier to replace that than going back into the heater core again AND perhaps the best news of all This should put to rest my fear the coolant level warning I'd been getting and the coolant I'd been losing could be the Head Gasket. I've never been so glad to find a leak before... The only major issue remaining is my Lower Timing Chain Cover Gasket leak and fixing some rust bubbles around the windshield and replacing that glass. I did an oil change 21 days ago and haven't gotten the engine oil level message yet but its still dripping so gradually i'm getting up the bread to get that done.
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/603/cables001kc7.th.jpg (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cables001kc7.jpg)
Flashing back to a few months ago when i thought i needed to replace the Blower Motor and had the EXPANSION TANK off the firewall but still connected to the hoses just kind of propped up on the Intake Manifold when my Hood blew down on it . Thereafter i believed it had been cracked and was leaking coolant but it seemed to have stopped or maybe i just never looked carefully enough but here you can see it appears there is coolant leaking somehow from the tank. I can see it dripping so that coolant in the pic was not overflow or spillage it was dripping as i photographed. I was just at the Dealership getting some new O-Rings assuming i needed to refit them and would have to tear everything apart again but i wasn't smelling any coolant in the cabin. I even took it by an auto shop and had a mechanic lend me his nose. He said he definitely didn't smell any coolant in the cabin and he would have if it were there.
Puzzled since i thought i was seeing coolant leaking mixed with condensation from inside the Air Box i aimed the open engine bay into the bright sunshine and found this leaking at the Tank... Much easier to replace that than going back into the heater core again AND perhaps the best news of all This should put to rest my fear the coolant level warning I'd been getting and the coolant I'd been losing could be the Head Gasket. I've never been so glad to find a leak before... The only major issue remaining is my Lower Timing Chain Cover Gasket leak and fixing some rust bubbles around the windshield and replacing that glass. I did an oil change 21 days ago and haven't gotten the engine oil level message yet but its still dripping so gradually i'm getting up the bread to get that done.
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/603/cables001kc7.th.jpg (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cables001kc7.jpg)