2004 GT2 Coolant Leak on Passenger Side

[apok]

first time poster, long time driver. I've got a somewhat severe coolant leak on the passenger side of my vehicle. Yesterday my car gave me an overheating warning while driving, and when I pulled over a lot of coolant proceeded to leak out. I could see a trail going down the road that followed my car.

I'm not the most handy of people in terms of troubleshooting, so I had it towed to a Canadian Tire that was able to look at it. They told me that the piping on the sepentine belt tensioner was the cause, and have quoted $250 in labour, with a part price TBD tomorrow when they can find a distributor that carries the parts. I've been searching around and found many posts on this forum saying that this is likely caused by the elbows failing; I'm going to confirm when they call tomorrow morning by asking specifically which parts they are talking about replacing.

If it's the elbows, there's enough information around that I can do this on my own. The shop is about 6km (4mi) / 5minutes away from my house. If I top the rad off with coolant/water or even just water, should I be able to make my way home relatively fine?

[Explicit_Spade]

How far you make it depends on how bad the leak is.

It sounds like it's the elbows to me. They are simple to do, if you have any questions just ask.

[Fivefingerdeathpunch]

Im kinda leaning on the elbow aswell.

Turn your heat on full blast and fill it with coolant and limp it home.

[apok]

Turn your heat on full blast and fill it with coolant and limp it home.

Would turning the heat on get the water pump going? I thought I read somewhere that the coolant system will only turn on at a certain temperature point. I was thinking of making the drive at night when it's ~45F out.

[stealthee]

Turning the heat on removes heat from the system. The water pump runs when the car runs.

[apok]

Fair enough. It might've been the coolant thermostat triggering something.

Will update tomorrow morning with the part quote.

[Explicit_Spade]

Thermostat is on the front of the motor on the drivers side. That wouldn't cause a passenger side leak.

[apok]

Just received my total quote. $450 with part and labour. $85 of which is a coolant flush. I'm going to not throw away money like that and just do it myself.

[apok]

Picked up the elbows from NAPA today. At first they didn't think they'd carry it and pointed me to a dealer, but I searched their site with part no. 47065 (Dorman/HELP), and it came up with their own part BKP 6601736. Only $6!

[apok]

So I've got everything reassembled, I think the longest part (45min!) was removing the UIM elbow from the belt tensioner.

I'd like to do a coolant flush. Does anyone have any protips for doing this? I picked up 3.78L concentrated dexcool, and an extra 3.78L premix. Is it fine to use the bottle of concentrate and top the rest up with water, or should I really be sticking to 50/50?

edit: Are there torque specs for the tensioner belt and alternator bolts I need to worry about?

[Fivefingerdeathpunch]

if the system is somewhat clean and does not have sludge and other junk in it, a simple fill the rad with water and let the car heat up to get the water moving around and help flush the rest out. Then drain the water out and fill it back up with coolant.

The 50/50 stuff you buy from the store is very watered down, so what I would do is poor the whole gallon of concentrate into the rad and then poor the 50/50 stuff in. Because the concentrate will mix with some of the water still in the block and after you add some of the 50/50 it should be around a 70/30 mix which is perfect for where you live.

[apok]

Sounds good. I'll give that a try.

[BillBoost37]

You do know..the part numbers for both dorman and napa are in the "common parts" thread?

[apok]

You do know..the part numbers for both dorman and napa are in the "common parts" thread?

I do now for some reason I wasn't finding any search results on Google, I'd only seen the GM part numbers up until I found the dorman one.

[BillBoost37]

Just call, I got them memorized..lol

[apok]

Having some trouble locating the radiator petcock... do I have to remove the skirt under the front bumper to get at it?

[BillBoost37]

If that pos works, you'd be lucky. Much easier and quicker to pull the lower radiator hose.

But ..it's on the driverside rear if you are really insistent on finding it. Some pull the air dam...It's not 100% necessary.

[apok]

The petcock actually worked once we got better access to it. When tightening it we discovered that you could put a socket over it as well heh.

We ended up draining/rinsing through the rad til it was clear, and then pulling the front knock sensor/rinsing through, followed by one last rad flush. Topped the car up with the bottle of concentrated dexcool followed by the premix, ran it til we couldn't put anymore coolant in, and that was it.

The coolant that did come out was fairly clean. I had my block heater explode on me a few years back, so when it was replaced new coolant would've gone in.

Thanks for all your help guys!