The cooling system on this car has given me fits. Today's "cool" adventure was replacing the water outlet on the right side of the engine. This was leaking badly enough to leave small puddles under the car. My theory is that the gasket took a compression set and didn't rebound as it should. There also may have been a hairline crack that couldn't be located. Next time this happens, the gasket alone will be replaced instead of the whole unit. The gasket is $10 instead of the entire unit at $35 from the dealer.
For those of you keeping track at home, that makes a leaky water pump, leaking heater hose, possibly leaking radiator hose, and now a leaking water outlet gasket that have needed to be replaced in the past 2 months or so.
Pardon the dirty pictures, the old one was dug out of the kitty litter dumped under the car to sop up the spilled coolant.
Underside of outlet with leaking coolant traces:
Flattened gasket that is even with the edges in places:
More traces of coolant:
This took about 2 hours start to finish, including a 30 minute coffee break. A locking tension clamp tool was essential to getting off the larger tension clamps in awkward places. The radiator hose was left on until the outlet was removed from the block, since that clamp has a lot of tension and is in a very awkward position otherwise.
For those of you keeping track at home, that makes a leaky water pump, leaking heater hose, possibly leaking radiator hose, and now a leaking water outlet gasket that have needed to be replaced in the past 2 months or so.
Pardon the dirty pictures, the old one was dug out of the kitty litter dumped under the car to sop up the spilled coolant.
Underside of outlet with leaking coolant traces:
Flattened gasket that is even with the edges in places:
More traces of coolant:
This took about 2 hours start to finish, including a 30 minute coffee break. A locking tension clamp tool was essential to getting off the larger tension clamps in awkward places. The radiator hose was left on until the outlet was removed from the block, since that clamp has a lot of tension and is in a very awkward position otherwise.