phenryiv1

Cooling woes continue. I drove the car to work yesterday (with a jug of distilled water in the back just in case) and things were fine. No puddles under the car that I could see, but as I got ready to head home I got a "Coolant too low" warning. I topped it off and drove home.

Once there, I checked the level (still good) and put the car up on ramps.



I took off the lower splash cover https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/sho...diagId=51_5089 in an attempt to find the leak but no luck. I let the car run for over 30 minutes and never saw a drop of coolant. I checked the tube over the radiator and it was completely dry, and checked every hose connection that I could while I was under the car.





At that point, I assumed 2 things:

1. The drop in coolant level was the result of the car "burping" and the level dropping accordingly, and,
2. The small amount that I saw under the car was the result of spillage when removing and/or refilling the tank, since some coolant was on top of the splash shield.

At least one of these assumptions were incorrect.

I decided to try to drive the car to work today (it is supposed to be 97* today) and the E30 - though a convertible - lacks A/C (and if it rains, driving in 97* weather with no A/C and the windows up is a bit uncomfortable) but as I left me development I realized that leaving the front splash shield off was not going to work, as the back panel is held in place by the screws from the front panel. I turned around with plans to install the crews or the whole shield (while on a dirty garage floor, dressed in work clothes, no less) but I saw more coolant pissing out of the lines near the radiator. At least I could now locate the source of my leak.



Based on this https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/sho...diagId=17_0742 it looks like I need at least 17127521778

And maybe some hoses from here, if I find anything else wonky: https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/sho...diagId=11_3755

BostonJon

jesus, i had no idea there were that many coolant lines on these cars.

sorry to hear about your issues, but i'm glad you've potentially tracked down the problem.

phenryiv1

Me neither. I tried to explain it to a buddy of mine who (like me) has an E36. He recommend that I just replace all the lines on the front of the cooling system, just like most older BMW owners do. The E30/36 has a limited number of hoses. This thing is a mess. I was over $600 in hoses alone.

BostonJon

i'm used to an upper/lower hose and heater core hoses and that's about it.

sadly, it's probably easier to replace some of them together rather than dig in there a few different times to replace them one by one.

are you positive that the leak you're seeing is due to a faulty hose/clamp and not a abnormal buildup in pressure that is finding the path of least resistance to escape?

phenryiv1

Same here. Hoses to/from the radiator, coolant overflow tank, and the thermostat/housing/water pump, plus the routing to the heater core. That is it.
I considered that but to be quite blunt, I am spread pretty thin on disposable income (read: car money) right now. I run a side business in addition to my real job and things have been slow. All car money comes from the side gig, plus I just got back from vacation (where I dipped into car funds for some fun stuff). I just dropped money into doing the cooling work on the E30 and am still trying to finish my E36 this summer, but that may be back-burnered even further.

I ended up ordering the offending hose and a few fasteners that were missing from the splash pan, plus a new radiator drain plug (those tend to fail). If this fix does not work then I will just run down the list of hoses on RealOEM and replace them all. The one that looks to have failed is actually fairly easy to access. If I have ot start doing other ones then the mess of interconnections are probably best served with a total replacement of all of them. And with 130K on the car right now it might not be a bad idea anyway, but I would like to see what this hose does for the problem.
At this point I am not really sure about anything. I still have no idea how it ran for 30 minutes last night with zero leaks and then it ran for less than 3 minutes today and was hemorrhaging coolant.

Logically, one might deduce that there is a blockage caused by the thermostat failing to open but I don't know how likely that is. I have seen leakage after being parked, and the thermostat should have opened last night during 30 minutes of idling in a garage when ambient air temperatures were 90* or better.

phenryiv1

Added my photos to the post above.

Also, while I was under the car and awaiting drips that never materialized I did go ahead and install some Nokya yellow fog light bulbs. The off-white color of the stock bulbs always bothered me, given the contrast with the HIDs. No more:





On a not-so-happy note, there was a LOT of oil on the underside of the motor:

phenryiv1

So the replaced coolant tank did not solve the problem. After almost a week of waiting for the replacement lower radiator hose it finally arrived.

I give up on the picture links. I'll post them later.

pocholin

Yeap because your pictures are never visible

phenryiv1

All of the links are broken in the whole thread or just the more recent ones?

I use PhotoBucket and my early posts have the PB links. Recently I tried Google Photos. I can see all but my most recent post.

Do do any of them work for you?

pocholin

Cannot see any of them...not a single one, just to be redundant ;-)