Help! Coolant Drip.

[mhall1019]

2002 Turbo with X00 package; stock engine.

Somehow or other the removal and installation of the four green bolts in the picture seem to have caused the little rubber (?) accordions in the other picture to start dripping. I can see that the metal pipes that the rubber bellows connects seem to be farther apart at the bottom than at the top. Its possible that the bottom bolts were torqued down too far and pushed against the coolant header off the water pump in front of it. Or maybe I pried the header out of place when wrestling with the muffler clamp. I think I need to correct the issue with the gap between the tubes in order to get the leak to stop.

Anyone have any ideas besides 1 bar "overpressure" (why don't the Germans say "g" for "gauge" pressure, which is the pressure over atmospheric??) duct tape.

Late breaking news: we've determined that tightening and loosening those bolts affects the rate of leakage. Is it just time to replace those 4 pieces on each side (16,17,2X18) on illustration 105-00 (2002 turbo) or is there a proper torquing sequence for those bolts. Will continue searching shop manual.

Thanks,

Mike

Edited July 15, 2009 by Loren
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[Loren]

Looks like a bad hose or water pump to me...

[PAULSPEED]

Squeeze the hose and see if it is soft. The

heat could have soften it and produced

a crack. A soft hose should be replaced.

Paul

[mhall1019]

There's no rubber hose involved here (unless you want to call it an internal rubber hose) and its not coming from the water pump. It is dripping from the connection between two metal tubes which consists of a rubber insert and a couple of seals. The torquing of the upper and lower bolts that hold the muffler bracket onto the case effects a slight movement of the header (square metal tube) that comes off the water pump and feeds the heads (unless I've got the direction of flow backwards) and causes these connectors to leak. The two lower bolts go through mounting holes in the header tank and secure it to the case sandwiched between the bracket and the case. I'm assuming that when the connecting piece is new it allows some flex between the two metal tubes, but now with 70k miles, its lost some elasticity and both sides need to have the four pieces replaced (2x999.707.411.40, 996.106.238.71 & 996.106.214.70 on each side and the oring on the forward pipe connection to the head, 999.707.410.40). Anyway, unless someone has seen this before and fixed it some other way, that's how I plan to handle it.