loosing coolant at an alarming rate, need help asap please.

[quikveedb2]

driving home today my coolant light came on, didn't think much of it since i had just gone around a pretty tight on ramp and carried on. watching everything closely, driving along. car started getting warm, then too warm for my comfort so i turned on the heat. coolant came out of the heating vents onto my feet. SHIT....so i stopped.

i was in the grass & the car was too low to see where it was coming from so i called my roomie, he came with water, we filled up and tried to limp home. made it off the highway, stopped again to refill and now i can see coolant POURING out of the bottom of the car dripping off the tranny. i can also hear the hissing of the heater core or something leaking pressure inside the car, and the drivers side floorboard is covered in coolant.

i need some help as to where to start, i'm going to start pulling the car apart tonight or tomorrow & order parts ASAP, so i can get it back in working order since it is currently on dd duty. any help is MUCH appreciated, tia!

i started a thread recently b/c the car was running warm, so here's that for reference:
http://r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=176065

[bear]

your heater core or something close blew a hole, or was flow eroded old car problems, anyway, take your heater hoses off your core and connect them together. that will bypass the core so you can dd it till new core comes in.

[CarsSuck]

heater core

[CarsSuck]

take your heater hoses off your core and connect them together. that will bypass the core so you can dd it till new core comes in.

do this for now.

[quikveedb2]

thanks for the quick replies guys! i really appreciate it.

your heater core or something close blew a hole, or was flow eroded old car problems, anyway, take your heater hoses off your core and connect them together. that will bypass the core so you can dd it till new core comes in.

where do i access said hoses? i assume i need some kind of male-male connector to link the 2?

[bear]

not sure without looking at my engine but you can take one hose all the way off from the engine to the core and pull the other heater hose off the core and hook it on where the other one connected to the motor or heat valve

{-----in------}
motor heater core
{-----out------}



{-------------
motor ) no more heater core
{-------------

[Raxe]

Haha sorry to hear that, the exact same thing happened to me today too in my S38 car. Driving to work and it starts pissing coolant all over the drivers footwell. Took it all apart tonight, looks like I'll be waiting a couple days for a new heater valve. Sucks.

[quikveedb2]

ok well i've got a project for tomorrow after work, i guess. additional question, the car got hot, like to the bottom of the red on the gauge. at this point i killed the motor and let it sit until it seemed to be well below normal operating temp. how bad is that? should i be concerned about the head warping?

[xwill112x]

probably not. i did that to my m42 which are notorious for the head warping, and mine is fine.

[quikveedb2]

i sure hope that's the case, or i might be doing a motor swap a bit sooner than i had planned. got my center console pulled apart in anticipation of the impending heater core job. should be a blast. you're right down the road from me will, we should do a drive sometime.

since i'm at work all day today i'm trying to do a mental rundown of what is likely to have caused the leak and failure. i had previously noticed that when the heater was on i detected the sweet smell of coolant, is that an indicator of a bad valve? i plan to go ahead and replace both valve and core since i have the console torn apart anyway. i'm thinking the warm running condition i mentioned in my other thread was putting additional stress on a system that already was not 100%, and finally cause the worn part(s) to fail. i'm leaning towards the warm running being a partially clogged radiator. sounds reasonable to me, thoughts & ideas welcome. even with all the bullshit that goes on here it's really great to have a wealth of information available when it really comes down to it. yay, r3v!

[quikveedb2]

update: isolated the heater core/valve and plugged the hoses and the coolant leak is cured. while i was under the hood i decided to check out the clutch on the fan, with the car at idle i can stop the fan fairly easily, a folded piece of cardboard did the trick no problem. it also appears to be moving fairly slowly. i'm thinking the clutch is going/gone, causing the warm running condition as it is not pulling the volume of air that it should. sounds reasonable, no?