leaks

[Matty o]

hey i noticed that my car is using a fair bit of coolent and i looked under the car and it seems to be dripping from the back of the motor, its not the thermostat housing leaking and all the hose clamps are tight. what else could it be? also i have a slight power steering leak, also wot could that be, i dont think its the pump.

[Shortstuff]

It could be a welch plug on one of the heads causing the coolant leak. They corrode eventually and leak. I've been quoted $80 to replace a leaking one on the back of my passenger side head. You need to stick a mirror down between the engine and the firewall to check them. An old door mirror is ideal if you can get one.

The power steering leak could be quite a few things. The first thing I would do is check the connections on the pipes - both the screw fittings into the rack and the clamps that secure the pipes. The seals in the rack itself can also leak, but if it's these the boots that go over the ends of the rack will probably have quite a bit of fluid in them. There are also some other screw fittings on the rack that could leak, and although it's unlikely they are, it is always worth checking.

[Matty o]

so it could be a welsh plug, is it hard to do yourself or is there anything you can use to sort of seal it up,the car only got hot once, it didnt go into the red but about 3/4 but since then its been fine.

[Shortstuff]

It's not hard to do, it's just tricky to get at the ones on the rear of the heads. There's not enough room to swing a hammer so there will be difficulties removing the old one as well as putting the new one in. It took me about 1/2 hour to do the ones on the front of my heads. I was going to take my head off to get at the rear ones on mine, but since a local garage quoted me a good price to do it I though i'd take the easy option this time.

If you do find that it's a welch plug causing your leak, I suppose you could seal it up using some JB weld or something similar. I'm not sure i'd recommend it though as it probably wouldn't last too long, and also most things like that need a clean dry surface to bond properly which would be very hard to get on a rusty leaking welch plug.