Has anyone smelled their coolant as they sit at idle? I mean everytime i drive my car I can smell it, the temp gauge reads 3 bars but I never hear the fans and am just wondering if this car just runs hot or if maybe I've got a problem. The coolant tank seems to rise and lower as the car heats up and cools down but it fluctuates very little.
Any ideas?

 

Have your dealer pressure-check your cooling system with a leakdown tester. If the tester shows your system is losing pressure, the leak should be easy to find.

However, even if you're smelling coolant, you may not have a leak. On my Subaru Legacy GT POS Wagon, I smelled coolant from the first day I owned the car. The dealer ran a couple of pressure checks and found nothing, and there were never any drips or puddles. After a couple of months, I finally found a little bit of coolant sitting below the alternator; apparently some had gotten spilled at the factory when the system first was filled. That part of the engine never got hot enough to burn off the coolant, but it got warm enough to cause that lovely coolant fragrance. And, unbelievably, I had a similar problem when I got my Acura TL last December; there was a small puddle of spilled coolant on the splash pan under the engine.

[Edited by Spa2K on 04-09-2001 at 12:28 PM]