Ulysses
Enthusiast
Last week was my first time on a road course as some of you may recall (and what a blast it was!!). I unfortunately wound up on the dirt and drove over a small ditch bumping and scraping my front facia on the passenger side (no biggie).
When I got into the pits, someone had mentioned that I was leaking coolant. I figured I was just dumping through the overflow because if the heat of the day combined with the fast driving, but the car was not over heating at all, so I didn't give it a second thought. Driving home through the desert, I kept an eye on the temp gauge and all seemed fine.
Well, I had some time today to work on the car and was planning on burping the coolant system. I noticed the facia bottle was extremely low so I started filling it with a coolant mix when I noticed coolant dribbling all over the garage floor. "Hmmmm, that's odd". I reached in to see if the overflow hose had fallen off the metal tube it was attached to or if it came loose from the overflow bottle. Nope, and it was dry on top. I reached down below and the bottom of the bottle was soaking wet. It had to be a hole. So, I ended up taking off the facia to get a better look and sure enough, there was a hole on the bottom of one of the corners of the bottle!!! How the heck did that get there!?! After close inspection it was obvious what had happened.
The bolts that hold the facia onto the radiator panel below are very long and the facia bottle sits very low. One of those bolts sits real close to the corner where the leak was. You can see the mounting hole for the bolt in the picture. When the car had made contact with the ditch, it bent the lower panel up sending the bolt into the facia bottle. The bolt did not have to travel very far upwards either to make contact.
So, for those that have hit a curb up there or those that might, be aware that you can easily puncture your facia bottle, doesn't even have to hit very hard. Thank God I didn't end up over heating in the middle of the desert somewhere on my way home.
JonB, I'll be callin' ya. I need a part
.
When I got into the pits, someone had mentioned that I was leaking coolant. I figured I was just dumping through the overflow because if the heat of the day combined with the fast driving, but the car was not over heating at all, so I didn't give it a second thought. Driving home through the desert, I kept an eye on the temp gauge and all seemed fine.
Well, I had some time today to work on the car and was planning on burping the coolant system. I noticed the facia bottle was extremely low so I started filling it with a coolant mix when I noticed coolant dribbling all over the garage floor. "Hmmmm, that's odd". I reached in to see if the overflow hose had fallen off the metal tube it was attached to or if it came loose from the overflow bottle. Nope, and it was dry on top. I reached down below and the bottom of the bottle was soaking wet. It had to be a hole. So, I ended up taking off the facia to get a better look and sure enough, there was a hole on the bottom of one of the corners of the bottle!!! How the heck did that get there!?! After close inspection it was obvious what had happened.
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The bolts that hold the facia onto the radiator panel below are very long and the facia bottle sits very low. One of those bolts sits real close to the corner where the leak was. You can see the mounting hole for the bolt in the picture. When the car had made contact with the ditch, it bent the lower panel up sending the bolt into the facia bottle. The bolt did not have to travel very far upwards either to make contact.
So, for those that have hit a curb up there or those that might, be aware that you can easily puncture your facia bottle, doesn't even have to hit very hard. Thank God I didn't end up over heating in the middle of the desert somewhere on my way home.
JonB, I'll be callin' ya. I need a part
