coolant leak, need advice

[Carl W]

Went out to my 2008 roadster this morning and there was a puddle of coolant as shown in the attached picture. I charged last night, FYI. I refilled the reservoir with coolant and found that it only drips when the pump is running. See other attached pictures. I can't tell if the leak is at the hose where the drip is, or if it's higher and dripping onto that hose. Perhaps it's as simple as removing the wheel to better access that one hose. Any thoughts here? Could/would the local tire place take care of this for me (assuming it's near the bottom of the pack)? She has 60k miles and I drive her every day.

 

[X.l.r.8]

Put a piece of kitchen roll above the leak so it not touching the pipe after cleaning as much as you can to see if it’s from above. The obvious place being where the reservoir connects.

 

[Carl W]

Put a piece of kitchen roll above the leak so it not touching the pipe after cleaning as much as you can to see if it’s from above. The obvious place being where the reservoir connects.

Good idea. I'll give it a try.

 

[Gary1M]

Carl,

My Roadster developed a similar coolant leak about a year ago. Turned out to be a crack at the top of the ESS coolant tank. The SC did the repair and the cost of the part was $91.66 plus labor to install.

 

[DRM]

I had the same problem about a year ago and it was also traced to a crack in the plastic reservoir tank. It took a few months for me to actually bring it in since I only saw a puddle form every few weeks.

 

[Carl W]

PROBLEM FOUND! The advice from all of you has been very helpful. As is usually the case, I'm not the first to have this problem. Upon closer inspection of my coolant tank, I found that there was a drip flow down the main hose from the bottom of the coolant tank. See attached picture. However, the real issue wasn't the connection or tank at the bottom. Instead, when I slightly moved the upper small hose that shoots coolant into the upper part of the tank, it broke off completely. See attached picture. So I'm certain that it was already cracked and this allowed leaking coolant to run down the tank, over to the main hose, and down to the bottom of the car and onto the ground.

My temporary fix was to cut up a coiled garden hose which has an internal diameter that was perfect for pushing the inlet hose up into without leaking. Then putting the garden hose into the top of the tank. I have since this time drilled a hole through the original cap so that the garden hose now goes through that and shouldn't splash coolant out. Still need to plug up the broken inlet hole, but I think this fix will allow me to drive until I can get the tank replaced.

 

[Roadster]

 

[Carl W]

Here's the final MacGyver fix where I drilled a hole in the cap to prevent coolant splashing out. I've driven at least 100 miles since doing this and haven't lost any coolant. Trying to get a replacement reservoir. Is our reservoir also used on some other car? In other words, can I get the reservoir from another source? The cap is half in German, but my searches for Audi, BMW, MB, and VW haven't turned anything up.