I lost the return hose off the engine during a wonderful Sunday drive. Fortunately, it was at the start of the trip back from a picnic lunch in the mountains and the car was quickly shut off. With some help from a good samaritan with a large pair of channel locks, the hose was reattached and ~1/2 bottle of coolant and 4-5 coolant bottle-fulls of tap water was used to replace the now missing coolant. Car was driven the remaining hundred miles or so back home with no problems and with normal temperatures the whole way.

Now what? Verify the correct coolant level and drive as-is? Have the coolant/water mixture replaced properly? Something else?

 

- inspect the condition of the hoses

- verify proper operation of the thermostat and water pump

- after the system has been verified, and flushed, replace coolant/water mix at proper ratio

You need to understand the reason for the hose popping off because it may be a symptom of something deeper.

You can monitor temperature using a obd scanner tool to see that all is well. The temperature gauge is useless because it is closer to an idiot light with a needle.

 

I'll check them, but I had all the hoses, the thermostat (& housing), and water pump replaced about 2.5 years (~9k miles) ago. My current working assumption is that they didn't fit the hose clamp on properly and it eventually came loose.