Test my diagnosis: 2000 V70XC

[Ethan]

Hi ETCG Fans,

I’m working on a 2000 Volvo V70XC with a 2.4 liter, turbo inline 5 engine. The owner of the car (a good friend) reports that the coolant reservoir empties after about 450 miles or 3-4 weeks of driving (perhaps 2 quarts). I can verify that cooling system was fully bled. There are no DTC codes present. The cooling system in this car is sealed, and operates at ~22psi. I don’t have a cooling system test cap for this car, but did perform a leak down test. All cylinders were within 5-6% of each other. However when pressurizing the #2 cylinder, the coolant level in the reservoir came up, to the point of overflow. There were no visible bubbles, like I would expect with a blown head gasket or cracked head. Perhaps the breech is very slight. This is an odd problem that I haven’t seen before. I am thinking that it may be a lightly blown or slipped head gasket

Any Ideas?

Stay Dirty

Topic

[Lorrin Barth]

There has to be a leak there. Why else would the coolant level change?

[EricTheCarGuy]

You might try a ‘block test’ to verify the head gasket issue. I cover how to do that in this video.

Keep us posted.

[Author]

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