BAD.TAG

I have had the car exactly one month and early on I noticed leaves blowing out of the radiator area when washing it. Along with those, was a faint, sweet smell of coolant which raised some suspicions given the known issues with these cars and the fact that the passenger side was replaced about 10k miles ago. So I planned for some maintenance over the Easter weekend

I decided to order a new one to have on hand..lets just say I'm glad I did. Thats not cleaning foam of some sort, thats calcified coolant that was rock hard. Prior to changing, there were no leaks or signs of an issue

jml8785

Yeah. The big issue is debris getting caught between the evaporator and the radiator. This stuff (leaves, feathers, cigarette butts...etc) gets in there, gets wet and rots out the radiator. A couple of weeks ago, I removed the bumper and took it apart and found all sorts of stuff stuck between them. Just blowing or washing them out from the back doesn't do it.

BAD.TAG

Exactly what happened here. There was no mention of a cleaning at any of the services with the prior owner, so my guess is it had been a long time if ever.

Hopefully the pictures serve as motivation for someone else. Its sort of like that smoking commercial where the lifelong smoker tells you about the long term effects