Thread: leaking coolant in a weird spot

hi guys, ive recently started getting good size puddles under my car after it sits for a while. Its coolant, but its coming from the center of the car up against the firewall. The only thing I see back there that coolant flows through is the heater hoses which appear dry. I thought possibly a bad head gasket? Any thoughts on what it could be? Temp doesnt get hot, i run about ~180 degrees constantly, the temp gauge will jump up and down from about 160-190 while im driving but never gets over 190. Thanks for any thoughts guys

i had the same problem, turned out to be the heater core hoses were shot, all soggy and stretched out. they no longer would hold when the car got warm. if you feel the black pad over the fire wall under where the hoses are, it should be wet, the leak runs down behind the pad on the fire wall and drops out under the car dead center.

if this is your problem, take the car to the parts store, and test fit the hoses, they let me test fit 10 or so hoses, one side is fatter then the other so its a odd hose. i even had to trim the one i bought a bit to fit right.

awesome, thanks guys ill check it out tommorow. hopefully its something easy like that, head gaskets would suck this time of year

Unless you have a turbo or are running the car way lean you dont have a bad head gasket.

You can also have a leaking freeze plug. There are a couple back there. Time to crawl under and ID the culprit

well now that its finally done raining i can get out and look at the car, i noticed the other day when i was changing the valve cover grommets, that the block between the head and the block on the back side where its leaking from looked wet. this is after being inside the garage. Only reason i was thinking head gaskets is theyre not factory, they were repalced when the motor was rebuilt ~11k miles ago. You'd think they would be fine, but my valve cover grommets with the same mileage from the same distributor just started leaking also. Im hoping that the gaskets arent bad, but ill report back tommorow with any findings. It doesnt seem to blow any smoke while its running, which I thought they did if the head gaskets went.

well got under it this morning, and was dissapointed and happy at the same time. The puddling is in fact coming from the heater core hoses, but while i was under there, i noticed my oil pan gasket is starting to leak, and the head gaskets have some wetness around them as well. I purchased the gasket kit through rockauto 11k miles ago when the motor was rebuilt, and it was all put together correctly, but all the gaskets seem to be letting go already which kind of pisses me off. Im probably gonna do the head gaskets now before they go completely because im leaving for school in january, any tips or tricks that make it easier to change the rear? All i can coem up with is rocking the motor forward. thanks guys for all the input