After noticing some smoke coming out of my engine compartment today I looked a bit closer and found a large amount of coolant leaking out of the rear of my engine (below where the stock fuel pump is located). When I rev the engine, I notice that the coolant spews out relatively freely There appears to be a coolant return line near this area, but I can't see much in here (and the FSM doesn't offer much help either). Has anyone dealt with this problem in the past?
Not sure if it helps, but I recently cleaned and replaced my valve head cover and installed a new valve head cover gasket -- Could this have anything to do with my troubles?
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Beefsteak when I'm hungry, whiskey when I'm dry
Greenbacks when I'm hard up, heaven when I die
there is a metal hose connection bolted to the back of the head that has a gasket
the hose that attaches to it goes to the heater core
then there is the metal tube that comes off the back of the waterpump and runs under the exhaust manifold
the hose on the end also goes to the heater core
so its either the gasket, the hoses or the metal tube leaking
or if your unlucky its the heater core itself
be carefull removing hoses from heater core
its easy to damage
Love those Tercell 4x4 wagons but they sure suffer from road noise.
My guess it is one of the hose connections going to the heater core, they usually fail right at the clamp. The engine end of the heater hoses are attached right under where the fuel pump is located.
Petros wrote:My guess it is one of the hose connections going to the heater core, they usually fail right at the clamp. The engine end of the heater hoses are attached right under where the fuel pump is located.
Wow. You guys are right on - thanks for the feedback. On your recommendation, I went out and took a closer look at the coolant hose connections near the rear of the engine and found that one of them had failed right at the clamp. I bought a new replacement hose and it appears that I'm back in in good standing. This also explains why my heat wasn't as warm as it was in the past.
Now that I've made the repair, I can rule out the head gasket theory (!), but I'm left with a heater that doesn't quite blow as warm as it once did. I think I'll (carefully) grab another heater core next time I'm at the junk yard. Is this difficult to get to? Can I get to it by removing the glove box or do I have to remove the whole dash to get access?
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Beefsteak when I'm hungry, whiskey when I'm dry
Greenbacks when I'm hard up, heaven when I die
Heater core replacement = no fun
i would try flushing and anything else that might work first
but if you do it
removing the front passenger seat does make it a bit easier on the back
the new cores are aluminum and not as thick as the original brass ones
you may get lucky and find a non-aluminum core but i would not count on it
the thinner alum one needs some messing around to get a good seal all around
any bypassing air will reduce heat output
once i replaced one when the engine head was removed by carefully cutting thru the firewall
the core slides right out
then some patching of the firewall is required
sure was easy compared to the under the dashboard method
Love those Tercell 4x4 wagons but they sure suffer from road noise.
There appears to be a coolant return line near this area, but I can't see much in here (and the FSM doesn't offer much help either). Has anyone dealt with this problem in the past? 