Coolant Disc Valve Failure

[xflyboyx]

Good day all,

Sunday memorial weekend, while I was on a ride to Nevada City, Ca., coolant warning came on hwy 49 in Auburn Ca., did not think much of it other than need to add more coolant, then a gentelman behind me was flashing his lights, I though to my self is it someone I know, so I slowed down and the gentleman said " better watch your temperature gage, you lost a lot of coolant back there", so I stopped at a shopping center to investigate, now I can smell the burning coolant and can see a trail of coolant behind me, as soon as I stopped, I can see smoke on the right rear side, took a look under the car and coolant was leaking all over the parking lot in buckets (exaggerating), to make a long story short I was thinking it had to be a hose failure.

AAA came to resuce (what was suppose to be a 20 min wait turned out to be one hour and a half wait) and towed car home.

After exposing engine from top and front and jacked up the car, no hose failure in site (very odd I thought), so the next step would be getting distilled water to find out where the leak is, got 4 gallons of distilled water and 1.5 gallon later found where the failure is.

#12 (Disc Valve)

notice the separation of the black piece from white piece

that is where the coolant was leaking from.

this is the new Disc Valve

so next step is to figure out how to get the darn thing out, considering the limited access from top of engine, got one factory clamp out of the way (from top of engine access) then disconnect water line supply #6 from ATF cooler from under car. then take everything out the top engine access.

so if you have a chance to inspect the valve I would do so asap, or even better replace it.

everything back to normal for now.

[carlosvquezada]

I don't see any way you could get to this part from the top engine access. Am I missing something or can you offer any advice from your experience? Thank you.