Uh opening it up the coolant tank tomorrow once it's cooled off, but what do you think this might be? :O

If I didn't know any better I'd think someone threw a used up lemon slice in there after having their cocktail. Additionally, today I found a giant chocolate chip cookie on top of my engine, but under the hood. Totally unrelated, but I presume some type of rodent has been hanging out in my engine bay for shelter lol. Felt bad throwing his cookie away.



lemon slice?

 

It looks like the float for the coolant level sender. My Mustang has one that you can see when you remove the cap. Just a guess. You better put out some mouse traps. You know what to use for bait!

 

If you mix up longlife coolant and « normal » coolant, you can get jelly in the circuit, which can in extreme cases clog it up. So in case this is not a joke from one of your family members (The cookie may hint in that direction ;-) and if this is indeed some jelly, you’d better flush it all.

 

No one has access to my car unfortunately, hoping it's not jelly. Going to open it in a little bit and I'll take pics. Might need to park it on an incline to get it to float over to me (cause it's only on that corner of the tank) near where the cap is so I can see it.

How do you flush it? Is this something I can do or need a mechanic?

 

I was going to say the same thing? It looks like someone dumped some green coolant in the tank?
I have seen something very similar in an older XJ I worked on.




Even after flushing and changing the coolant I still had stains inside that upper tank.
.
.
.

 

Well that's a relief though, if those are just stains in the plastic it wouldn't be a problem I assume?

I'm anxious about this because we're supposed to leave for an 18 day road trip Chicago to Grand Canyon and praying it's nothing that would put the trip on hold.

 

It’s supposed to be there. It is in mine too and mine is new. It probably is the float as suggested above. I tried to use a boroscope to take a picture from the inside but my coolant level is too high to keep it dry.

 

The thing is, I had major coolant problems for a while when I first got the car. Cost me about $5k to fix it so after that, I literally check the levels every 2 weeks or so just out paranoia and I'd never seen that before. That's why it got me so panicked.

So is it just a plastic piece that floats around random places?

Thank you all for being so quick to reply, we leave Saturday morning and you can imagine my anxiety level lol

 

I remember mine always being there. So I don’t think it moves around much.