98 Honda Accord coolant

Hi,
I have a 98 Honda Accord at about 77k miles. About a month ago when I
changed a light bulb, I realized that the coolant reservoir was empty.
I never paid attention to the bottle before because I assume the guy
who change my engine oil should fill it up. The engine temp is pretty
steady, no overheat at all and I do not see any white smoke from
exhaust. So I fill it up to max. About two week later, the coolant drop
to min line. So I fill it up again. Ever since I start to realize the
coolant level in the bottle decrease slowly since I check it in the
morning when the engine is cold.

So I went to car shop and they did a pressure check and told me the
uppper hose is leaking. So I had them replece both upper hose and lower
hose, flush the coolant. Yesterday morning when the engine is cold, I
fill up the bottle to max. This morning I saw bottle lever went down
again.

Can someone tell me if there are problems here? I appreciate your help.

Thanks a lot

 

fill it one more time to be sure. it may just be air expulsion is the
radiator guy did not burp the system properly.

if it's still losing coolant, check the drain plug on the radiator - the
seal may be leaking. if not, check under the car where the water pump
drains through the timing belt cover. if there's coolant there, the
seal's starting to leak. some "weeping" is normal. leaking preceeds
failure.

 

thanks for the rreply.
I forget to mention, after they repalce the hose, they told me they did
a pressure check again snd do not see any problems.

 

If your radiator style is the same as my daughter's '93 Accord, look at the
top of the radiator where the brace crosses over it from front to back. Ours
has a flat spot (the rest of the top is domed) and it has developed a crack
from one side of the flat spot to the other right down the middle.
Apparently that flat area flexes and eventually cracks through, because when
I laid a bead of steel filled epoxy over it the crack continued through the
epoxy! It should have shown up on the pressure check, though.

Mike

 

wrote in

If the level keeps going down all the time, get them to do a pressure check
of the CYLINDERS. They will do this by screwing an air-line adapter into
the spark plug hole, pressurizing each one to 100 lbs or so, and looking
for bubbles in the coolant.

What they're checking for is a blown head gasket. If they find no external
leaks, you'd better be certain the head gasket is OK.