Sorry if this seems like an odd question, but does anyone have a sense of how impactful, or not impactful, the slope of the ground might be on the accuracy of the site glass read out on the side of coolant expansion tank?

In Ontario here there are no drains typically in garages. Because this is the case they typically end up instead creating a sizeable slope in the construction of the garage floor so that there is adequate runoff towards the door. The slope is large enough that my trying to do an electronic engine oil dipstick reading is useless in my garage…The reading is way off…

In any case, the reason why I’m asking: I was milling around in the garage yesterday and had it on my list to do a small cleanup in the engine bay while the car is in winter storage. I have to admit, with the car being a 2024, I had not been paying a large amount of detailed attention to the coolant expansion tank level other than a quick look here and there noticing that it was generally full up with coolant…Which it is, and I certainly never had any overheating etc…

That said, I noticed yesterday that the site glass currently is showing the level as just slightly below the minimum level (at least on the slope where the car sits in storage). I must admit I never did check accurately the level on flat ground initially when I took delivery of the car brand new last season. Not the smartest I know, I think I was too much in new car glory and distracted by the excitement of all that….lol

Anyway, not sure what the odds are that I actually have a problem with a 2024 with 2600km on the clock. I will obviously have to endeavour to get a good flat surface reading in the spring with the engine cold, but I was just wondering in the meantime if anyone might have a sense of whether or not I could actually be fine, and the site glass is just quite sensitive to slope in a similar way to the electronic oil dipstick?

Really wish that I would have been smart enough to baseline the coolant after taking delivery but I wasn’t…Head down in shame here guys…lol…I really should have known better and thought to given all the talk on the forum about coolant and overheating concerns with these cars etc…I rested too much on the laurels of it being a brand new car I suppose… ;-(

In any case, thanks in advance for any thoughts that you might have.

Cheers

 

Place a strip of blue painters tape aligned atop the current (and in your case slanted) coolant level while the engine is cold and use that as a temporary reference. That's what I have in place.

 

Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that before taking the car out of storage. Thanks for the suggestion. Appreciate it.

 

Do you suspect you have a leak or something?

 

No leaks (watch, now I will have one after this post ) but I check it every time I have the hood open. The level can be difficult to see in the opaque plastic box unless you get really close and use a flashlight.