Well I don't know. I guess I'll get it whenever I can then.

Dang, my car keeps losing coolant from somewhere. I can't seem to tell where. I have replaced the radiator cap, most hoses except the lower radiator hose. I'll try that tomorrow. Might just pull the radiator and have it gone through. For $50 I can get it rebuilt by a great shop here so that might be the easiest thing.

It runs absolutely great for about 250 miles of hiway driving and then temp climbs. Shut it down, cool it off, refill radiator and go another 250.

Just got back from Dallas and that was the routine. Once each way. Runs great other than that. My little grandson was beggin me to "drift" and I had to ask him what the heck that was? He is only 9 and knows that! So we looked at some videos of drifting. I guess we will go together on a vacant airstrip I know and try it sometime.

I had a problem last week with leaking coolant. It was one of the heater hoses. There are three of them. Did you check those? There's one going from the block to the valve that controls coolant flow to the heater core, one from that valve to the firewall and then another from the firewall back to the block. Other than that there is a screw in plug in the bottom of the radiator for draining it out that may also be leaking. Bleeder screw completely tightened down? It's located near the neck where the thermostat is at. That is at the other end of the hose that comes from the bottom of the radiator. Last thing is the coolant drain plug on the block which is the big bolt on the front of the block right behind the exhaust manifold. Maybe your overflow resevoir has a crack in it. Is it holding any fluid? Other than those things and the radiator hoses, there's really no other place it could be leaking from unless you have a head gasket problem. You're not puting out any white smoke are you?


If you are thinking about doing anything to the radiator I would just replace it. You can get a new one from an auto parts store with lifetime warranty for less than $100 bux. The plastic end tanks on the OEM radiators are known to fail in time as mine did. Sprayed cooland all over my engine and caused me to have to spend even more money replacing componenets inside my distributor.

Good luck with it. Sounds like a tricky one.

MRfreeze, thanks for the advice. I'm gonna go ahead and replace all the hoses since I have no idea of their age. I'll probably go ahead and replace the radiator too. If I wasn't going to keep the car, I would probably just let it ride.

Thanks again! Hope to see you at Laz's meet this month.

Mondo, it was good meeting you too. You've got one of the cleanest Sol's I've ever seen. Very impressive.

As for your questions about replacing cooling system components.

You're definatley not going to see any performance or fuel economy gains by going with a higher performance radiator or non-OEM thermostat. If you want to replace, just go with OEM replacement.

For the thermostat, I'd definatley replace that with every timing belt change. They're cheap at less than $20 and good insurance.

As for the hoses. Well there's not a lot of miles on them but the fact is that they are nearing 10 years old. I'd say that's a judgement call. Again they are cheap. You can buy all the major hoses for less than $100.

The radiator is tricky because one day it'll fail and you never know when that will be. My OEM one went out with about 125k on it back in 2003. Huge crack in the top plastic end tank. Those tanks will fail. They become brittle with all the heat cycling. The OEM replacements you can buy at parts stores are aluminum ones as well. They're cheap too. Less than $100 as well.

You wanted to know the potential troubles. Well here's my story. I did my radiator hoses when I did the timing belt so they are good. One day my OEM radiator cracked on the top spraying coolant all over the top of my engine. Replaced that with a Koyo @ $300. Car was still overheating. Turns out the thermostat was bad. Another $20. Car ran great for about two weeks then just quit one day. Thankfully it was in my garage. After some troubleshooting turns out my ignitor was bad inside my distributor. There were traces of coolant inside the distributor cap. When the radiator cracked it sprayed coolant directly onto the distributor and some got inside the cap and shorted out the ignitor. So, ignitor = another $225.

So we narrowed the problem down to the thermostat going bad causing the car to overheat and take out the radiator which was probably on it's way out anway which in turn took out my ignitor. Total cost about $600 after coolant cost too.

Now I don't see this exact thing happening to anyone else. However, it could happen right. For less than $300 you could replace all your hoses, thermostat, and radiator and not have to be worried about getting stranded somewhere on the side of the road.

As clean as yours is though I'd probably wait till 12 years or 80k to do that stuff. Unless you have not done your timing belt yet. If not you're way overdue for that and I'd get it all done at the same time along with the water pump since the coolant will need replacing anyway.

Wow, sorry for the long post and the thread jack!