ATOT car repair guru help! I have a radiator problem

[iamwiz82]

Originally posted by: Roger

I haven't had the time to change the radiator. Is it a good idea to use Modine radiator in place of OEM? The Modine does not have plastic tank and it's all metal construction.

Modine is one of the best radiator manufactures in the world 😉

Read the thread again, what was my advice ?

Roger really did call it 🙂

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: jemcam

Originally posted by: NeoPTLD
Hello all,

I am having a car problem and I would like to get some advise from car repair gurus. I was going up a hill in the hilly terrains of western Portland with a few friends with combined weight of 300lbs or so. When we got the place pretty high up in the hill, my friend commented about some weird smell. When we got out of my car I noticed a hiss coming from my car and a bit of inspection revealed a coolant leak.

We drove back to my place and left my car and walked over to my friend's place. The next morning, I looked for a leak. I saw a leak on the top part of radiator which is made of some kind of plastic. There was a crack in the part with numbers written on it. I took it over to a tech savvy friend carrying a several gallons of water and running the heater full blast the whole time and he said the top hose wasn't hot all, so my thermostat must be shot. We changed my thermostat, filled the radiator with new coolant and this Stop-Leak thing that looks like glue with glitter in it.

Cooling system appears to work fine, except it leaks. It leaks slowly to moderately, but steadily. When I do anything beyond gentle city driving, coolant sprays everywhere from the crack making it necessary to top it off. The cooling system cools fine, yet there's not any pressure at the radiator top and I'm assuming it's losing all the pressure through the crack.


I think plastic parts in high temperature, pressurized section of the cooling system is uber stupid! Ford's known to use plastic radiator parts and from what I hear, they're notorious for developing leaks.

The car is 92 or 93 Mazda van and it has a V6 3L engine, which shares many designs with Ford. Is there a way this crack can be fixed?, albeit I'm not hoping too much on this. Should it need to be replaced can I replace the plastic part separately or must I replace the whole damn radiator? I need all kinds of advise and all are appreciated from how to fix, where to get parts cheap and basically anything that might be helpful.

These are some pics:

Engine bay
Crack
Another shot of cracked area

You can try to take it to a radiator shop. They may be able to replace the tank, which is the plastic part that's broken. That would be the cheapest. The second cheapest thing would be to contact a salvage yard.

BTW, if you loosen your cap so the radiator doesn't build pressure, the leak won't be so bad. That's a temporary fix at best, but it's enough to keep you from walking several miles.

Wouldn't loosening the cap make the coolant boil off under high temperatures?

 

[NeoPTLD]

Originally posted by: Roger

I haven't had the time to change the radiator. Is it a good idea to use Modine radiator in place of OEM? The Modine does not have plastic tank and it's all metal construction.

Modine is one of the best radiator manufactures in the world 😉

Read the thread again, what was my advice ?

I know I know, but I was really constraint on money and time. The radiator is going through about quart a week, which isn't that big of a deal, but it's gotten to a point that leaking, hot coolant is damaging foams in the engine bay.