P30 coolant disappearing?
It turns out there is no leak. I've put about 17k miles on my 1998 Winnebago Brave since buying it-- including one 12k mile trip to AK-- and from time to time the coolant has been low. The previous...
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An "invisible" loss of coolant could also be an indication of a very small leak in a head gasket, between the coolant passages and the exhaust gas passages. Look for slight amounts of steam in the exhaust gases when the engine is hot and traces of anti-freeze in the tail-pipe when it's cold.
I used to have a British Rover 2000 car that had the same "mystery leak". When it got to the point that I was losing a half-pint of coolant every 25 miles or so, I got serious about finding it. I found evidence of anti-freeze in the tail pipe. It turned out that there was an o-ring embedded in the head gasket that sealed a coolant passage from the exhaust system. It had gone hard with age (12 years and about 160,000 miles).
It was a lot of work to replace a 30-cent o-ring on an overhead cam engine!
I used to have a British Rover 2000 car that had the same "mystery leak". When it got to the point that I was losing a half-pint of coolant every 25 miles or so, I got serious about finding it. I found evidence of anti-freeze in the tail pipe. It turned out that there was an o-ring embedded in the head gasket that sealed a coolant passage from the exhaust system. It had gone hard with age (12 years and about 160,000 miles).
It was a lot of work to replace a 30-cent o-ring on an overhead cam engine!
