Disappearing Coolant

Coolant low light

I got a new light on the dash, this one for low coolant.  It seems like my car is the best test harness for warning light testing on the road today.

Checked the coolant reservoir and it was, in fact, empty, so at least I know the sensor's accurate.  But I didn't see a stream of coolant exiting the car.  The cooling system in a car is of the recirculating variety, so the coolant has just the following places to go:

1- Dripping out of the system
Maybe I did a poor job with the water pump and there's a leak.  But why am I not seeing a puddle of coolant?  Maybe the dripping is slow enough or it's making contact with something hot and evaporating?  But where's the steam? Could the leak be occurring at higher pressure, so when the car is stopped idling at slow speed, no leak?
2- Mixing with the fuel, going out the exhaust
This would be worse.  I'm not seeing the white smoke normally indicating this problem.  The oil looks good as well, this would be milky, as the water in the combustion chamber would mix with the oil causing it to look cloudy.  While I've never done a head gasket, this is the fix for this issue.

Better than out through the tail pipe

I went through about a gallon of coolant over a few hundred miles, each time, before filling, looking for a leak and I didn't see anything dripping.  Then, after a nice drive, I pulled into the driveway and found the coolant overflow reservoir yet again empty.  Looking down, my driveway revealed what was hidden to me so far: a nice deposit of fresh coolant.  Not much, so I know the leak is small, probably worse at speed, as this issue as cropped up as I've been taking the car out for progressively longer trips.

Not much of a leak, but enough...

The top of the engine around the water pump was dry, but under the car I see some drips from under the radiator support.  That's probably where we need to start looking.  When I purchased the car, the prior owner told me it was leaking from radiator, but this didn't seem to be a radiator leak, as this part was dry.

Corroded pipe

I filled coolant reservoir at the end of the day and the next morning it was empty.  There's a hose leading away from the reservoir and it joins with a metal "T" joint that looks to be in bad shape and leaking.  The T joint joins the overflow, bottom of the radiator and water pump inlet.  Why something that could corrode like metal?  The parts counter guy and I were discussing and we think it's due to the proximity to the exhaust manifold.  This makes sense.  The reason for using such an inferior material like regular steel probably boiled-down to cheapness on the part of Ford.

Here's a close-up from under the car.   I needed to remove the air dam, held in place by some 8mm bolts and those dastardly plastic screw rivets.  Once removed, I could get a clear line of sight on the problem.

The most leaking seems to be on the end of the pipe heading to the water pump, but the amount of moisture on the pipe itself seems to imply leaking from several spots or it has become porous.  I ordered a replacement (about $40 from FordParts.com, the "official" Ford site seemed to be the only place I could get this) and I should have things back together in a few days.

Leaking camshaft seal

Thanks Relatably.com

Behind the leaking water pump lurked a leaking camshaft seal. For just a few dollars, I was able to replace this component and since everything else was apart, it made sense to do this extra bit of work.  Such is the slippery-slope of repairs: fixing something makes apparent what needs to be fixed next.  Then, because things are apart, you might as well fix...  it's difficult to stop.  In fact, I'm resisting replacing the starter; it works fine, but since it's exposed anyway, it's not that much additional work (just four bolts!) and only about $90... I'll stop.

We got into this thinking with our house: shopping for a canister set morphed into remodeling the kitchen.  Planted a few flowers and ended with a medium-scale landscaping job.  In a way, I resist starting projects because that's the easiest way for me not to fall into the "marginal effort" trap. And that's a problem in and of itself.

Right tool for the job

Sounded better than it worked

I've never replaced a seal before, this was new territory for me. I took the advice of the internet and purchased a camshaft seal puller for the job.  I couldn't get this tool to do much good because the positioning of the camshaft left me little room for leverage.  I ordered this from Amazon, because it was inexpensive (about $15) versus other vendors and nobody close had this tool in stock.  I had Prime, so the two day delivery took about a week.

For some reason, even though Amazon was the vendor, it took about 4 days of "getting ready for shipping", so while the elapsed time was 5 or so days, the shipping was still "two days".  This is the frustrating part about Amazon, I find myself going there because I think shipping will be better/faster but when I order from EBay/RockAuto, the parts arrive quickly and at a total cost that's about the same as Amazon, without the $100 annual fee.  I get value from Prime in other ways: the Jazz station on Amazon Radio is fantastic and the video on demand seems to be better than Netflix these days.  But for shipping alone, Amazon Prime isn't much of a bargain.

The wait for delivery cost me a week of time, as I needed to replace the seal before reassembling the rest of the cooling system. Since the engine wasn't running and the car was propped up on some ramps, I couldn't do much to reposition the car for other repair work like replacing the paper-thin rear brakes. 

Actual tools for the job 

Actual seal pullers, bonus Rorschach oil stain

In the end, I used a pick and small screwdriver to pull the seal out, with the pick doing most of the work.  The seal puller was both a waste of time and money for this job. Using the the pick and screwdriver, I was able to get around the seal and get a good grip for extraction.  Unlike the water pump, by examination there was no "look right there!" problem with the old part, other than the accumulation of oil on the engine block underneath the seal. 

Seal seating tool

Before replacing the seal, I put a bit of oil on the outside and inside surfaces and pushed the part into place.  This required a bit of wiggling and I used my small screwdriver to make sure the seal was correctly/evenly seated around the camshaft.  I then used a 1 1/16 socket on an extension as my seating tool gently tapping the seal into place with a hammer.  I've been finding some combination of a hammer plus another tool has been very handy thus far in this little project of mine.

 Done!

New seal, hopefully no leaks!

There's no way for me to test if this is properly done before assembly, so I'll cross my fingers and hope for the best. No doubt, more leaks exist, so it will be difficult to know if this replacement made a difference -- but I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Pick the red seal

With a little clean-up of the image, here's a comparison between the old (black) and new (red) seals.  Looking closely, the black seal has damage from the removal process but otherwise looks "OK". I don't have a before picture of the area around the seal, but it did have a considerable oil accumulation.  I'm just happy leak from the water pump didn't result in water going through the seal, as that would have much harder on the engine.

This being done, I'm ready to attach the water pump and next the coolant manifold and refill the system.  Once completed, the engine will be in running order again. 

Sorting out the water leak

As advertised, my Freestyle leaks coolant; in this case, water, because the prior

There's the leak

owner (PO) just filled the cooling system with water as coolant steadily leaked out.  The water leak was enough of a trickle that the car could be driven home, the PO telling me the coolant needed to be refilled every day or two. I think this was the critical reason why the car was on the market.  The oil leak seemed to be something that could tended to on a weekly basis, this problem was every few days.  From the PO's perspective, the leak was coming from the radiator.

I was looking forward to be working through a "mystery leak", this would be fun (hey, don't judge) to track down and make for more interesting content for you, the reader.  What the PO believed to be a leaking radiator wasn't that at all -- this is both good and bad news.  Debugging the problem was easier than expected, after getting the car home, there was a nice steady drip visible from under the car that we traced to the bottom of the water pump.  I spent time looking over the radiator and I didn't see any leaks.

The water pump is at the top of the engine and easily accessible.  Feeling the underside of the pump, I felt what seemed to be the source of the problem: the water pump is two halves and the seal between the halves failed, thus causing the leak. To check my inkling, I needed to remove the pump and have a good look.

Staining from coolant

Removing the water pump first required the removal of the air intake, then the  thermostat manifold which required removing about 20 water hoses.  The hoses felt like they hadn't been moved since the date of manufacture and didn't want to budge.  Not having a proper radiator hose pick, I used a small screwdriver to separate the rubber from the manifold, fearing I would split the hose.  But, I managed to loosen the hose from the fitting while keeping everything intact.

Getting a good look at the pump reveals that the leak isn't from the front gasket as originally suspected, but from the back.  The water was adhering to the pump

Crystallized coolant

housing and giving the appearance the leaking coming from the pump gasket.  The leak left a clear discoloring on the part from the leaking fluid, and there were deposits on the end of the impeller shaft, so that’s the problem. 

The root cause, a failed seal

Just to make extra-double sure, I used my 8mm socket disassemble the pump and then using a hammer and 10mm deep-well socket, removed the impeller from the housing.  Here you can clearly see the failure of the seal on the impeller shaft, so I'm sure that's the problem.  After much digging, I found that, for this car at least, you cannot purchase just an impeller, so I'll need to buy a new water pump.

At the same time, the camshaft seal was clearly leaking oil.  This resulted in the deposits on the top of the engine and maybe was the source of the oil on the lower part of the engine as well.  The oil leak doesn't look that bad, but it will worsen over time, so best to replace the seal at the same time as the water pump.