Hey everyone,

I got a bit of a dilemma. I have a Koyo OEM replacement radiator and last night my car dumped a whole load of coolant when I got home and parked it infront of my house. I went over all my hoses and none of them are ripped. I checked my coolant reservoir and there is barely any coolant left in it, also the radiator is not full either ofcourse.

It looks like most of the coolant was pushed out from the radiator cap...is that even possible? I had small amout of coolant sitting on the fan shroud (you know how the fins can hold liquid) and the upper cross member (radiator support) was also covered in coolant and so was undre my hood around the battery area/radiator cap area. What could have caused this? Bad cap? The cap I use is the one that came with the radiator and it's 108 Kpa. I don't remember what's the pressure for the stock OEM cap but could the Koyo cap not be holding enough pressure or something?

Any advice or input is appriciated, I need to get the car back on the road since it's my DD. Thanks.

 

Do the obvious.
-Make sure all hose connections are tight.
-Make sure the drain plug on radiator is tight but not over tight.
-Bleed the system.
-The resivor tank is for over flow only you shouldn't have to fill it up.
-Make sure the radiator cap seals.
If you've done all of this you've got another problem and more details are needed.
Happy investigating.

 

Ok let me get this straight. The coolant gets pushed in the overflow tank when the coolant gets hot and temperture rises. And as the car cools off it gets sucked back in the radiator. So when I park the car the coolant gets sucked back in the radiator. Here is the wierd thing...I checked my reservior and there is no coolant in it. I am sure I had coolant in it. I used the FSM to bleed my coolings system and added coolant to the designated level.

I mention this since if the car got overheated to the point where all my coolant got pushed out into the overflow would'nt there be a little left? It's all gone.... there has to be a leak somewhere so when the coolant tries to travel from the overflow to the radiator it gets dumped out.

I'm not sure about hoses and the connections. The problem is that I rebuilt my cylinder head about 8k miles ago and bought a new radiator while I was changing stuff. I ended up not buying new hoses and using my old ones and well they have 160k miles on them. I don't know if the new radiator and cap coud create pin size holes on the hoses.

Also I changed my water pump about 3k miles ago. Have not touched the thermostat tho.

Well I was planning on changing all my radiator hoses and heater hoses anyway since they are pretty old. Would you recommend buying new OEM clamps from Honda also? or the clamps don't go bad? The stock clamps are the pressure spring clamps so could they lose their hold? Also if I do need to buy new clamps is there an alternative like t-bolt clamps? The OEM clamps are 3 dollar and some change so I might as well get something that is easier to get on and take off.

 

it is possible for the radiator cap to let out fluid, but i'd think that capping it and securing it would hold it down. did you check the line between cap and resorvoir?

 

Have not had time. I got off work at 11 PM last night and had to be at work at 8 AM this morning. When I realized the car dumped that much fluild I just checked very briefly and decided to let it stay home. Did not want to risk overheating it by just filling it up and driving it. Do NOT want to have to pull the head off again, it was no fun. Had to hitch a ride to work...sucks


But ya as I mentioned above, I think I am sick of always worrying about my old hoses. I'm gonna order new radiator, heater hoses. Just debating if I should order new OEM clamps also.