Hey guys,

I know this is probably the quadrillionth thread about this topic, but I wanted to ask some of my own questions since the other threads didn't really touch on this.

I think my heater core might be leaking... I'm not too sure. The car hasn't lost any coolant whatsoever in the 12 month period I have been keeping an eye on it week to week. Sometimes, when I haven't turn my climate control on after a while I can faintly smell coolant. The passenger floor carpet smells like coolant too, but its definitely not damp... :nuts: I'm hoping that the core has leaked on the previous owner or something and the smell is still in the carpet... :pray: Is this possible? Because I never smell coolant from the A/C & heater fan. Is there anyway to test if its leaking other than pulling everything to bits?

Cheers.

Car is a KH Xi by the way.

I'm no expert, but what i did was get a few paper towels where i suspected the coolant was leaking onto the carpet, ( i lined the top edge of the carpet on the front passager side) and went for a long drive i then checked the towels to see if they had been wet with coolant. another good way is to just lift up the carpet in the front passanger, there'll be sound proofing there, smell that, and feel it, if it feels damp and smells like coolant you probably have a leak, often the carpet can seem dry dispite a coolant leak because its synthetic and doesnt hold a liquid well, so the coolant builds up in the soundproofing under the carpet,

Ah I forgot about this! Well it turned out the heater core must have leaked before, because the carpet smelt of coolant, so I cleaned it. Coolant smell hasn't come back since (touch wood) and it never gets damp on the sound proofing.

I'm no expert, but what i did was get a few paper towels where i suspected the coolant was leaking onto the carpet, ( i lined the top edge of the carpet on the front passager side) and went for a long drive i then checked the towels to see if they had been wet with coolant. another good way is to just lift up the carpet in the front passanger, there'll be sound proofing there, smell that, and feel it, if it feels damp and smells like coolant you probably have a leak, often the carpet can seem dry dispite a coolant leak because its synthetic and doesnt hold a liquid well, so the coolant builds up in the soundproofing under the carpet,

I made a thread about essentially the same thing not too long ago. If you remove the glove box assembly (4 screws inside the glove box, remove the kick cover, remove 2 screws, pull it all out), there is a small 4cm x 2cm square in the HVAC unit that you can remove the screw from and shine a torch in there. If you can see liquid (or in my case, can see where liquid has been and dried) then you most likely have a leak. This, and the standard test of checking for moisture in the passenger footwell.

Keep in mind you won't lose much coolant from the core leaking. In most cases (including mine) the seal dries up and leaks. Unless your piping has cracked or something, you will only have a slight drip which will take months before you notice lower coolant levels.

Check your service history. If you're lucky, it has been done and even written in there.

I suggest lining paper towel from the top left corner of the footwell (near the wheel well) and having paper towel all the way across to above the ECU (below the centre stack - radio, climate etc). In my case it was leaking above the passengers right foot, straight down from where the heater pipes pass through the firewall.

Might be worth getting a (good) mechanic to have a squiz. Maybe the NSW equivalent of Mal at MitsFix? :P