SnyperBob

Hi everyone,

I was looking for some hints or ideas of where to look. My car has been leaking coolant for a couple weeks now and it seems to be getting worse. Yesterday I pulled it all apart, and I'm having trouble spotting the leak.

The coolant seems to be running down the front of the engine, more towards the driver side. It's almost underneath the water pump. I can't really see any leaks around the water pump though.

Do you think this is the auxiliary water pump or the thermostat? If I take off the timing covers, would that help me see more and rule out some other possibilities?

I attached some pics. Coolant all over lower left of engine (when looking from front of engine) is from when I drained the coolant and it splashed everywhere.

Oh, another question....I was missing a bunch of odds/ends stuff when I took the car apart. Is my 2002 S4 B5 supposed to have both driver and passenger intercooler shrouds? It only had one on the pass intercooler....

Thank you

SnyperBob

There's a little hose coming out of the power steering pump that looked like it could be a little wet.

Tried to get a pic of it....

SnyperBob

I think my car has the plastic thermostat housing on it still.

My water pump is around 5 years old, 25,000 miles on it, along with the timing belt. If I'm going to tear is all apart, I'm thinking I should just replace the water pump (metal impellers), the timing belt, the thermostat, and the thermostat housing with a metal one.

JHM has a timing kit with water pump and thermostat for around $330. They also have a metal thermostat housing for $140.00.

I hate fixing to changing stuff that's not broken, especially when trying fix one problem. I would not way to replace a bunch of stuff and make it worse....but I'm getting too deep into the engine at this point.

Not sure what to do. I think I may have to remove those timing covers to see what it looks like under them. I may be able to tell better if the water pump or T-stat housing is leaking if I do that.....

Kris Hansen

Wow that's a lot of oil on that thing.. No wonder it's hard to find the coolant leak!

SnyperBob

I know! I'm contemplating cleaning everything off, reassembling it, and running it again to try to narrow down the leak. I really wanted to try to replace SOMETHING before I do that, since it did take a lot of time to get to this point.

I'm leaning towards the leak being from the thermostat housing (plastic, probably original), or the water pump. Thing is, if I'm opening it all up to replace those, I may as well do the timing belt, thermostat, and a couple other things.

I'd rather not spend $500-$600 on parts, replace a ton of stuff, and still have the leak. I'm not really sure how to proceed at this point.