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Old 14th November 2015, 09:11 PM
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Jaglavak Jaglavak is offline
Wrench Bender
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: PNW
Posts: 53,738
OBTW, I'm sure you know this but it's good to say once in awhile. Antifreeze tastes slightly sweet and animals love it. A fatal dose for you is about two ounces if you were to drink it. A fatal dose for a cat is more like a quarter ounce. So keep the varmints away, wash off your shoes, etc. And if you open up the cooling system, have five milk jugs and a drain pan and catch as much as you can. It's bad for the fish too and it can be recycled.

The wet pipe under the alternator sounds promising. That's in the general neighborhood of the water pump. However it could be wet with oil not water. One way to tell is slide some clean cardboard under the engine and run it for awhile.

Question; when you fill the radiator and then run it, when you shut it off is the expansion tank filled to overflowing? Exhaust leaking into the cooling system can lift the radiator cap at 16 PSI and blow the coolant out the expansion tank. It looks like a mystery leak because nothing is leaking. The cap is supposed to lift like that. A blown head gasket will leak more under pressure, so sometimes it doesn't happen unless the car is on the road. This scenario would be basically pressure from the engine pushing coolant out the overflow.

The youtube guy is mostly correct. Sealers are intended for small leaks. They can do stuff like plug pinhole corrosion pitting. However none of that has much to do with head gaskets blowing. That is usually the result of overheating. I'm pretty sure your car has an aluminum head, and some of them won't put up with much overheating at all. Once the head is warped it generally won't stop leaking until it's pulled and decked flat again. Basically the head gasket lasts forever unless it gets abused. Sealant isn't going to prevent that.

FYI, I have never succeeded in plugging a quart a day leak with sealer. Don't hit me.
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