Hey, just wondering if anyone's experienced this happening.
I had my car warming up today and found that it was leaking coolant rather enthusiastically from where the upper hose clamps on to the radiator.
I'm wondering about whether these radiators fail because the first time running my new engine about a month ago, the engine overheated. Can that cause an aluminum radiator to crack or whatever? I've also noticed mysterious smoking coming from under my upper radiator mount with no visible damage, dust or cause of any kind.
Another possibility brought up to me for the overheating was maybe the thermostat is bad or somehow the cause. It's a Stant Superstat (a pretty good one, I thought) that does not have the silicone valve I'm used to seeing on the Motorcrafts. I installed it with the spring cage thing towards the engine. I found a few sources that said that was right, but for whatever reason it just didn't look right to me, and I couldn't remember.
So, like this
Just covering my bases. The cause I found for the overheating was something I'd done wrong with my fan controller. Doesn't rule out the thermostat thing though. And, I was thinking maybe something wrong with the thermostat whether it be backwards or not operating properly for whatever reason allowing too much pressure in the upper hose causing this leak at the radiator.
Maybe the leak is as simple as a worn out spring clamp. I didn't have this problem with it before, but I also just replaced my hoses and the old ones were pretty swollen. I wanted to stick with the spring clamps because I've heard the worm gear clamps have uneven pressure and can cause problems because of that. I've looked all over for new spring clamps in the past and pretty much came up empty handed.
Or maybe the new upper hose failed somehow.
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