20 foot tower of coolant.

[E30godz]

First a little background...i leaked out some coolant somehow a while back while doing some work on the car, and it dropped just so the coolant light came on...No big deal i thought, just a little low, i'll grab some when i go pick up some parts monday...So i notice when sitting and idling that the car heats up to about the 3/4ths mark and sits..but still, no big deal, not big enough for me to stop driving it for two days...So ANYWAYS, It's 11 oclock on a saturday night and a friend of mine and i are bored shitless as there wasn't anything going on, so we decide to run up mainstreet for kicks. We drive up there and meet some guys in an 87 civic that junkyard turboed his...it was interesting...but the guys were cool and we showed them my incomplete turbo setup....i left the car running so some oil would still be running through the turbo to cool it down a bit before i shut it of...well we start talking and i forget...all of a sudden some guy is like...DUDE what is going on? and i look at the engine bay and a fucking TOWER OF COOLANT is shooting up from the throttle body...i check the temp gauge and its not in the red yet..i turn off the car and throw a towl over the gyser and wait....it cools down finally, the tower stops and i get to figure out how im going to drive this thing home. We find that it blew a gasket on the little thing on the side of the throttle body that has the coolant lines and the vacuum hose running to it...so i rip the AFM boot off, take off the two coolant lines, get a stainless steel brake line i have sitting in the trunk, and plug it into the two coolant lines and clamp it down...instant fix...so know its 1 oclock im covered in some coolant and grime, yet feel like goddamned mcyver for fixing it ; ). i know this is overshadowed by the fact that it was my fault to not put coolant in it. Well yea, i was bored so i thought id share... :D

[M3 Ryan]

thats funny...
I think I will bypass the coolant line to the TB, as the weather never gets very cold here in SB, and thats just to keep the TB from freezing into position.
If you think about it, its acting like a heater for the air going into the motor too, which is not good, as warm air looses horsepower...
anyone else do the bypass for performance reasons in a warm climate?

[Bill 84 318i]

If you think about it, its acting like a heater for the air going into the motor too, which is not good, as warm air looses horsepower...
anyone else do the bypass for performance reasons in a warm climate?

If you really think about it, you'll realize that the air is whipping through there so fast that it would never even have a chance to heat up significantly. So nothing would be loosed.

[M3 Ryan]

if you ever put your hand on there while the motor is running and is warmed up, you will burn yourself. It gets VERY hot. All metal around air passing through will have an effect on it. It's also another place to have a coolant leak develop.

[E30godz]

heh i agree about the coolant leak part...

[bkelsey86]

they bypass this on LS1's and they say they get like 8 hp, but then again thats on an LS1