On the way home from my MIL's today after Thanksgiving (5 hour trip), I got home to my BIL's to the sweet smell of anti-freeze and the coolant fans running even AFTER I've turned off the ignition! Wha? NEVER Did this before?


Pop the hood, coolant all over the drivers side of the engine compartment, coolant bottle empty, fans still running. But temp gauge sitting exactly in the middle where it has been for 10 years!??


Car cools off, fans off after cycling key a few times (temp gauge never above 1/2 mark). Fill reservoir with water, run engine, fill again, turn on heat, run fill run fill. Takes about 1.5 gallons in the end.


Put the cap on , head for home (about 30 minute drive) with a gallon of water in the back seat. make it home OK, water level down about 1" in the overflow bottle.


Run the car (this time with the cap on the reservoir bottle) and notice it dripping/streaming from the bleed line on the top of the bottle going to the engine. wiggle it a little bit and kapow! find that the plastic nipple is cracked/broken.


Check the forums here and seems as though it's a common issue. Check ebay, can get a new bottle for about $50, order it online.


But. Why is it that the temp gauge in the car never got above the 1/2 way mark. Ever. I can see that if maybe I just emptied the bottle I never overheated the engine (but maybe in another 20 miles the gauge might start creeping up) that would be fine. but the cooling fans were on FULL Blast even after I turned off the key, so SOMETHING new I was running hot? Why was it not shown on the gauge? Are there separate coolant sending units for the fans -vs- gauges? (My '81 Delorean has separate sending units)


And what about the "low Coolant" sensor? Is it in the bottle I'm about to replace? Clearly it was empty. Shouldn't the red warning light have come on with a "Low Coolant" message? (Actually, I don't know the answer to that. Does this car have a "Low Coolant" sensor/alarm? :-) Thanks in advance! Doogie







Should I replace the sending units?

 

To be honest, I had this exact same problem when my coolant tank exploded. Never overheated, just smelled like coolant. Especially when its a little colder outside, these things won't overheat when the coolant expansion tank blows up. The fans being on shows that the car was getting a little bit warmer which was triggering the tstat to toggle and then the fans. The is EXACTLY what happened to me about two months ago. Fans full blast, and coolant smell. You would have overheated if you kept driving, but when you started to smell the coolant, it was probably all lost in a matter of a minute or two, and thus why your temp gauge didn't change. So, the moral of this message is that it's happened to me and I found nothing while looking into it. Just pat yourself on the back for being able to smell burning antifreeze because you probably saved yourself a warped head.

 

I am laughing because I got a warped head recently, but it was from being overfilled with anti-freeze (Ethanol-based). During the discourse at the local "pub", I made the mistake of bringing "Your Mother..." into the discussion.

It seemed to have caused a blown gasket (maybe a blown fuse?), and I ended up with a warped head. (At least no headlights were put out!)

Ahhh... life in the Wild, Wild West.


(But they have little use for Jaguar drivers!)

(That was filmed quite near here, if you are wondering what North Dakota looks like)