So my wife brings the 951 home a couple days ago and basically says, "OMFG the car is steaming out the hood and I brought it home as fast as possible!"

I went down and there was just a little bit of coolant on the ground but I saw that the there were droplets on the bottom of the front lower valence (batwing). I took that off and could see that most of the coolant had come out of the right side of the radiator. The car was cool by now (because it took forever to get the batwing off) and when I poured coolant into the tank it gurgled into the system and some of it poured out of the upper right side of the radiator. I wish I could be more specific, but it is quite difficult to see much in that area.

Does this sound like a blown end tank? As far as I know the radiator is original, I have all the service records and none indicate a replaced radiator.

Dammit Santa, I have been good!

 

I'd guess a leak in the coolant hose where it connects to the top part of the radiator on the driver's side. Easy fix. Radiator leaks tend to be pretty minor. Hopefully your wife didn't drive the car far enough to do any damage to the rest of the engine.

 

I have a leak in the same place and I don’t know if it’s the radiator or the hose. Luckily it isn’t my daily driver because it is too cold here to analyze it now. So the car just sits. I have been trying to figure out if I know anyone nearby with a heated garage that wouldn’t mind if I messed up their garage floor. Or if we get a warmer spell when I have the time to look at it.

So I figure worse case I need a new radiator. Best case it’s a loose or split hose.

 

That would be good news if it is just a hose. Luckily it has been very cold here lately and she said the temp was high on the gauge but it did not enter the red zone.

 

Belive it or not - I had a similair thing happen to me. Turns out almost every coolant hose had a loose clamp! I have not owned this particular 944 very long and have never messed with the hoses, figure that one out..........

On an unrelated note - TheMAXX, what's the story behind your avatar?

 

My user name is one that I use at a few different places TheMAXX – my last name is ******* and I am Audio Engineer specializing in live sound. I would occasionally joke about taking the levels to the maximum. To the max. And then my son started reading and collecting a comic book called TheMAXX. So I use a picture of the comic book character and the name.

That is my cut and paste standard reply to the question.

I hope its just a loose hose clamp. I probably just need to bundle up, get all of the snow off of the car cover and see if I can get my hand in there to try tightening it up. It is 22 degrees in the middle of the day today.

 

Well all my hose clamps look to be tight. I put some coolant in and started the car up. When the car warms up I believe the coolant is escaping due to a bad sealing ring. Illustration 105-05 of PET shows the radiator setup and the part is labeled 28 on the diagram (944 106 928 00). Does this make sense? Are these things known to fail eventually?

 

[QUOTE=TheMAXX]My user name is one that I use at a few different places TheMAXX – my last name is Maxwell and I am Audio Engineer specializing in live sound. I would occasionally joke about taking the levels to the maximum. To the max. And then my son started reading and collecting a comic book called TheMAXX. So I use a picture of the comic book character and the name.
QUOTE]

It's actually quite good. And I'm not a comic book guy at all.