Disappearing coolant.

[RoninJedi]

1997 XLT 4.0L SOHC 4x4

My coolant resevoir keeps running dry. I fill it every time I get gas. No discernable leak from truck while parked or opperating at low speed. No issue with over temping yet. Black hole?

 

[JCat]

Hold your hand up to the exhaust pipe. Does water condensate on it ?

 

[RoninJedi]

aHA!

Im at work and unable to perform test, but I think you could be on to something. Exhaust definitly generates robust white cloud upon starting periodically but i never thought to see if that correlats with prior addition of coolant. Thanks!

 

[BrooklynBay]

Welcome to this forum! I've renamed your thread, and moved it into the stock 95-01 section. Connect a cooling system pressure tester onto the cooling system to locate the leak.

 

[nmroughranger]

Ever figure out what happened here? I have a similar situation, no white smoke at the tailpipe.

 

[deweyville65]

Try putting some stop leak in the radiator, see if you quit loosing coolant. Dont use a whole large bottle, it is only a V6. You may need to drain some coolant from the radiator. I use a Mity Vac and suck a couple of the bottles full, and just pour it into the overflow tank. That way it will be sucked back into the radiator when needed. A lot of guys will scream not to do this. But if you use some common sense, and dont use too much, it wont hurt a thing. After all the factories use it too. They just aren't going to tell you they do. If you are getting water in the oil, then that is a different matter, and you need more than some stop leak.

 

[MrWizard]

I had a similar problem. A lot of coolant disappearing really fast.
But not one drop appearing to leak anywhere visible.
And there wasn't any conspicuous white smoke from the exhaust suggesting a blown head gasket.
And strangely it didn't overheat even though it was low on coolant.

Finally when I went to remove the intake manifold to change the gaskets I found a huge puddle
of coolant on top of the engine. Must have been a gallon. You couldn't see it because the intake covered it.

Anyway, the thermostat housing was leaking from the bottom.
Replaced that and it doesn't use one single drop of coolant now.

 

[Xplorer82]

What ^^he^^ said.... samething on both of my trucks.

If you take off the intake "tube" that runs to the throttle body and use a bright light you will probably see coolant traces on the bottom/sides of the lower thermostat housing.... could also be leaking from the 2 sensors on top of the housing (my 98 had both problems)

Here is a link for replacing the thermostat housing. I just went to pull a part and grabbed 2 used but low mile thermostat housings. Was going to upgrade to the 3rd gen housings but pull a part didnt have any and i wasnt putting out all that $ to get the set up. Will upgrade my good truck when i find a 3rd gen @ pull a part.

http://bengrosser.com/howto/fordthermostat/

 

[SouthernSAR]

I have the same issue... I can see evidence of liquid getting everywhere around and behind the thermostat housing too. Think I'm gonna replace that sometime soon.

 

[Peanut74]

On my ex it was a cracked thermostat housing. The coolant would spray onto the intake manifold and would be evaporated by the engine when it was hot. The leak finally got bad enough that I could see some of the fluid on the manifold.

On my Ranger I was losing coolant. Checked all the normal places and things and nothing showed up. Turned out it was a cracked head. The head would only leak once the engine was warmed up to operating temperature.