dxb_8788

Not a must to have a water leak, if you got the error message for once just fill it while the engine is cold and keep the extra coolant in your trunk just in case if the message appears again then you should check for leaks sometimes if the cap of the refilling box is old it will let the steam to go out which means the water after being boiled and convert to gas leave the coolant system and not convert to water again after going back to the normal temprature.

Cream Sauce

I Will be heading to the dealer today or tomorrow to get the engine coolant, I will open the cap and top it off when the engine is cold as you have said, and we can see what happens from there if I get the message again it can well be a leak and I will have the stealer investigate, but I very much doubt this.

gotabyte

Brought mine to stealer for a different issue and they found a crack in lower radiator hose, $108 to replace. I had the message about a week ago and topped of reservoir. Evidently very slow leak.

Cream Sauce

Had no chance of going to the dealer over the weeked due to work.

I finally had a chance today to actually check the engine coolant, very interesting measurement system, some sort of yellow plastic piece with max and min. It was I would say 2/3 finger lengths below minimum.

Definitely heading over to stealer this wednesday to buy some and top it off

Cream Sauce

That is 2 or 3 finger lengths by the way !

I hope I have not damaged anything

insman

My low coolant light came on last week. I drove home and parked the car in the garage then heard a noise that sounded like the car was over heating. Sure enough, it was, and was leaking engine coolant in the garage. I filled it up with a big bottle of coolant the next morning (it started leaking it all out immediately) and chose to drive the 5 miles to the dealership........they replaced the reserve coolant tank (something like that) and a hose. $444.00. Glad it wasn't the radiator.

Cream Sauce

Alright, so I finally had some time today to pop into the dealer.


It says on the bootle

And the description


Is this the right stuff, I am asking because the guy serving me was like an idiot and it says nothing about engine coolant on the bottle.

He said to mix 1 litre of Anti-freeze with 2 litres of Water.

Cream Sauce

Also anyone care to explain what it means by "Heating system is turned on"

Sorry for being very over precautious, but i'd be heart broken if anything happened to my baby

EDIT: I guess I pour the coolant in while the engine is running and while the radiators inside the car are turned on.

However what is the anti-freeze effect ?

jm545i

If you got it from the dealer it's the right stuff. Water is actually a better engine coolant than the anti-freeze. The problem with water is its higher corrosive abilities and relatively high freezing point. The boiling point is kept high because of the system pressure, the coolant you're putting in provides both lubricant to the water pump, freezing point lowering, and anti-corrosion factors to the system in general.

In your case, seeing as though you only have to fill up the expansion tank, I would just get some distilled water, a jug, and mix the two roughly 50-50, enough to fill the tank back up, and just go drive the thing. (If it were my car, I'd probably just fill the tank back up half way with coolant, then the rest with distilled water, but if you want to go and pre-mix it, that's ok too.

If you were filling from empty you'd have to worry about making sure the heater circuit also was filled, but in your case, just fill up the expansion tank.

Cream Sauce

Thanks for the quick reply jm545i

She drank about a litre of 50/50 mixed as you said I done it while the engine was running, was amused to see the hose pissing into the expansion tank

Thanks for everyone's help!

Kind Regards,
Cream Sauce