multiple coolant leaks all of a sudden wtf?!

[Ian]

1994 plymouth acclaim v6. ok so a few weeks ago i drove my car home on the express way and when i was almost home I smelled coolant, opened up the hood and the heater core hose had breached a little hole and was spewing out AF…all of my other hoses were pressurized and puffed up too, which my car has never done before even after hot long drives.

so i ended up replacing the hose, replacing the thermostat, and replacing the radiator cap, all things that i thought may have caused a overpressurization of the system.

now ive been driving it around for 2 weeks, all seemed fine, got home parked it…went inside for 20 minutes, came outside, and there was a freaking lake of antifreeze under my car, passenger side, right under the water pump area.

I added some water to it and let the car heat up to pinpoint the leak… pulled the timing belt cover off, and there are sure enough little pools of AF in around the water pump area…. BUT… i then noticed that a tiny return hose above the whole timing belt area thats coming off the thermostat has a wet spot under it too…

and it gets even worse…after letting it run for a few minutes…the leak in the original area (the one that had the lake under it) completely stopped…and suddenly it started leaking out of the freaking lower hose on the drivers side at the bottom of the radiator?!

what gives? did all these hoses and possibly water pump just fail at the same exact time or could something be going on thats causing all of this mayhem? im so confuseeeed…. thank you for your help

Topic

[Richard Kirshy]

If all the hoses/water pump are the same age (and haven’t been changed in a while)
What ever caused the original overheating issues may well have stressed the remaining components in your cooling system to the point of failure.

Though when you say there is coolant around the water pump, and that the bypass hose above the water pump is shown to be wet.
It just may be the fluid dripping down.

I might suggest you go and pressure test the system to pin point any leaks then consider replacing all the hoses and clamps, depending on their age / condition.

[Mike]

A general rule of thumb is to replace all hoses and clamps every 5 years.

[EricTheCarGuy]

I’m not saying this is the case, but it might be worth checking. I know when there’s a combustion leak into the cooling system such as a head gasket failure, it can cause the rubber hoses to deteriorate quickly. You might check to see if you have such a combustion leak just to be sure. Otherwise, it might just be bad luck.

http://www.ericthecarguy.com/faq/finding-and-fixing-leaks

[Ian]

thank you, i think i’m just going to replace all hoses and do a nice big flush of the system and see if int acts up again, if it keeps leaking i will assume its the pump and if things puff up again i suppose i may need to consider a head gasket problem…ugh

[Rob]

Could be a blowen head gasket but I presonally dont see heads causing very large leaks like he was saying … but with the car over heating and if it has an alumanum head (I dont know if your car does or not have one) or steel head.. alumanaum will warp when heated cuasing a bad head gasket to happen… but usilly I see a small hole in them my self… and when the car gets heated you will see a sizzaling antifreeze comeing from around the head at a point… You can also check to see on you oil dip stick it will look like some one spit a loogy with flem on your oil dip stick… other ways to check is pull out your spark pluggs and check them and see if you see antifreeze or like the best way is with a camera and look in your cylider and see if it looks like it was steamed cleaned… but I would replace the water pump gasket.. if its around that they are uslly paper gaskets and will get all over because of the pump spining and spraying all over

[Ian]

ok so these responses have made me realize that the hoses leaking was likely a result of them being puffed up that few weeks back and that was a result of overpressurization, and that was a result of…something…something that i may have fixed post puff (the thermostat or the radiator overpressure cap) or something that remains unsung, so here are some details about that experience…

(bear in mind this happened a few weeks prior to my new hose leaks) drove home doing about 70 on the express way for 30 minutes, 2 minutes before reaching home smelled antifreeze, opened hood at home to reveal a pinhole on my heater core hose (the upper one i dont know if its return or intake) right after its mating with the nipple on the block. it was squirting out AF at quite a high pressure. the main upper radiator hose(leading into the t-stat) was puffed as well.

i was certain it was the t-stat, so the next day i pulled some slack from the heater core hose to cut off the hole and re attached it, then i replaced the thermostat which to my surprise seemed physically just fine, no noticeable damage, it compressed and everything. what was even weirder is earlier i was certain i felt a little spring in the upper hose that must have shot out of the bad thermostat…i suppose what i was feeling may have been the bands in the hose giving some resistance… so anyway i replaced the thermostat since i was allready in there.

a couple days i realized that the overflow cap must have been faulty as well, as the part of the system that was pressurized is directly linked to the cap, so if it was doing its job, what happened would have been impossible…so it got replaced too.

now the biggest and weirdest thing was that when this happened… the engine was cool…cool?! i had just drove home doing 70 for 30 minutes and the block/plenum was cool…well cool as far as engines are concerned…i know my car and i know what the temp should feel like after a big drive, but the plenum was cold enough to press my hand on for a few seconds… all the while the coolant was hot and puffed and crazy… i would have suspected the thermostat to have been stuck open then, but as i said before it was fine…

also note: ive had a head gasket blow on the last engine that was in this car, so i pretty much know what to look for… so… oil isnt milky, antifreeze has a little brown in it but ill chalk it up to deposits… exhaust is puffing out a tiny bit of visible white but appears normal…my hand did feel a bit wet after holding if up the the pipe for a few seconds but thats pretty normal as well right? also the coolant isnt gurgling like you would expect with a HG leak…i actually took the cap off while the engine was cold and the coolant just sat stagnant.

i’m gonna replace all the hoses and clamps and see if it happens again, if it does i have a compression tester, so doing all the cylinders will be my next go to.

p.s. i’m just thinking aloud so i’m sure not all information in this is valuable.

[Ian]

well…i replaced all the hoses today, put fresh coolant in…started the car…and its spewing out white smoke now. a fucking head gaskets blown…ive done this before and i can do it again…it wont be fun…but ill do it. now its worth mentioning that last time i changed my head gaskets i fixed them just fine, but the engine got a knock shortly after from some antifreeze that was in the crankcase… how should i remedy keeping the same thing from happening in this engine? just drain the oil first thing before i start breakdown?

[Rob]

just an FYI uslly when the thermostat is stuck open… you will see the tempture going up and down when you give the car gas… because the therimeratate is not regulating the temperature of the engine..
Sorry man to hear about your car.. when you take off the head make sure its not warpped or cracked sometimes when they over heat they warp also replace the head bolts…
I would drain the oil and the coolent and personnel I would like rechange the oil at like 500 miles to get any left over coolant out
also wipe some oil in the pistons because the might get antifreeze in it

[Ian]

ok update, today i pulled all my spark plugs out and analyzed… all looked pretty normal with the standard tinge of white on the leads. they were all dry on the ends, but my number 5 plug (the cylinder on the rear drivers side) has slightly wet threads, but i cant tell if its oil or coolant… is it possible for fouling to reach the threads? and perhaps thats the only place the antifreeze has condensed sofar since ive ran the engine so little since being damaged?

[Author]

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