Hello everyone,

I was helping a friend with his 2007 TL last night, and I must admit I was slightly out of my depth.

The story was, that Jiffy Lube did not fully tighten his radiator cap. The car ran for a while like this, and he noticed after a quick run that there was coolant over his garage floor.

He brought it over for me to take a look at. I checked the upper and lower radiator hose, and the radiator itself. We let the car get hot and checked for leaks. There were none. We let it cool like last time, and checked for leaks, there were none.

The car's temp gauge seems to be where it is supposed to be, and when I asked him if he noticed any fluctuations, or high temps. He said he had not.

The two things I did notice were:

1) When I squeezed the upper radiator hose while the system was closed, it was very easy to squeeze. This is not normal on my other cars, and would lead me to believe there is either a crapton of air in the system, or the waterpump is failing.

2) When I attempted to burp the system, it seems we got quite a lot of air out of it, but not enough I think, to warrant the spongy-ness of the radiator hoses.

My questions are this:

Should the upper radiator hose be spongy? Or should it be firm when the car is running?

Could there be a large amount of air in the system causing the spongyness, or is it a non issue?

Thanks
warlock

 

The coolant system runs at like 14-18psi; you should be able to squeeze the upper hose by hand. It should get harder to squeeze when the engine is at full operating temp and the upper radiator hose is too hot to touch by hand. Also, the system is self-bleeding, however, you must make sure the HVAC system is set to full heat.

Did putting the radiator cap on correctly stop the leak?

 

how many miles on the car? WP failures are not common on these engines from what I gather.

if you bled the system and it doesnt overheat during driving then there's probably no problerm

 

Yeah, there was no leak after the radiator cap was properly installed.

Thank you for the information on the cooling system, I will pass it along.

 

roughly 80k.

I agree with you, but I wanted to double check.