Coolant fountain/missing hose?

[WestCoastEta]

Hey guys,

I recently did the water pump & timing belt on my 86 m20b27 and now have a pretty significant coolant leak.

After finishing the belts a few days ago I drove the car for about an hour, parked it, everything was nice and dry. Later in the day I took a short drive to grab lunch and noticed a pretty big puddle of coolant under the car when I parked. I did some investigating and found the source of the leak (driver's side against firewall):



I looked for loose hoses and didn't find any, but I assume something blew off. Things are pretty tight along that side of the engine and I can't see everything going on with the mess of tubes and whatnot. Can anyone shed some light on what happened?

[jlevie]

That picture to too much of a close up for me to tell what I'm looking at.

[Northern]

I assume that's the firewall, and that nut is the back of the valve cover?

Is that the "Heater core recall" piece?

[101]

^^^ exactly what that is.

OP - the possibilities on that area of the engine are:

1) Coolant hose from side of block to throttle body heater
2) Coolant hose from thermostat housing to throttle body heater
3) Coolant hose from rear of head to heater core inlet
4) Coolant hose from thermostat housing to heater core outlet
5) In one of those heater hoses is the "recall" valve and another small hose that attaches that valve to a "T" fitting in the other heater hose.

It's hard to say exactly what is leaking on your engine.

If the leak is coming from the "recall" valve - most folks delete that and the associated small hose with no issues. Unfortunately, that requires replacement of both the heater hoses to do the job right.

[WestCoastEta]

Hah yeah sorry for the extreme closeup. That was the best picture I could snap in there. That's the firewall on the right side.

This definitely appears to be the recall valve:



"The recall valve has a wax pellet that melts at about 240*F thus blocking off the heater valve/core."

I think the system got too hot and the valve did its job. In doing the t-belt I discovered that my coolant is super rusty and I poured some coolant flush in there. The bottle said to "run the engine for a few hours" with the flush, but it seems like it just made my system run way too hot.

I'm going to replace those hoses and bypass the valve for sure.

By the way, I didn't mention that all this shit happened to me while at work. Driving home last night was stressful to say the least. Had to pull over to let the car cool down and refill the system. What a nightmare.

[jlevie]

If you found rust when you drained the coolant, more than a simple flush would be appropriate. I have an article on that in my Parked thread.

[WestCoastEta]

Thanks for the write-up, Jim. Any tips on breaking loose a very tough drain bolt on the block? I just can't get it to budge and there doesn't seem to be much room to fit a breaker bar.

[jlevie]

Thanks for the write-up, Jim. Any tips on breaking loose a very tough drain bolt on the block? I just can't get it to budge and there doesn't seem to be much room to fit a breaker bar.

PBlaster or Kroil and time for it to work without driving the car. By time, i mean at least overnight or longer. If the front of the car is well up in the air you can get a 1/2" drive breaker bar on the plug.