Cooling system diagnostics

[soxnail]

Hi y'all,
On my trip back from SPI TX to Dallas I noticed that the coolant temp was just a tad higher than I am used to. You know after years (21 in my case) of seeing your gauges at a certain spot you know when they are off even by a needle width. So when I got back I decided to see what was up with the system. First I took the hoses off and the fans assembly. I then flushed the system forward and back wards (garden hose and warm water). All good so far..no junk or rust came out in either direction. Then I put the hoses back on and this is the part that may be of interest to the folks on this board.
I was getting a slight loss of fluid, if I filled it to between min and max and drove the car it would drop to min when I got back home and stood over night. There was no fluid on the garage floor, so I suspected that the car was leaking when the system was pressurized. To test this one could buy a system tester or as in my case make one. I took an old expansion container cap and scraped parts of the seal see picture.


this will allow the pressure that I am applying via the over flow connector to pass into the system. See picture


using the above I pressurized the system to 20 psi and sure enough there was a leak in the connection to the pipe that takes the fluid to the heater in the car.

Any way I thought those of us that do not want to spend money a tester this is an easy way to pressure test the system.
Sox

[Lawrence Coppari]

Clever idea.