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Hi guys and gals,
I've had this problem with my 745T for quite a while now. In fact I'm not sure when it started. *Possibly* almost 2 years ago (~28K km > 18K mi) around when the engine was rebuilt. It seems that when the car is cold (not up to operating temp) I get the distinct smell of coolant for a few minutes. It seems that once the engine is up to temp the smell disapears and doesn't return. I've pretty much ignored it as the car functions pretty much flawlessly and doesn't seem to go through coolant (I know, coolant is toxic :(. The smell doesn't always seem to be present either. My floors are not wet and I don't seem to have any misting coolant vapor on the windshield. Today I was driving up the road with my Vo mechanic in the passenger's seat and he mentioned the smell. He said: "You know what that might be...." I said: "Heater core...?" He said: "Don't say that! But maybe...." I told him that it's been doing that for a while and doesn't show any other signs of a heater core leak. The only other cooling system issue I had was a leak somewhere near the driver's side of the rad while the car was in storage this winter. The leak only seemed to be apparent when the temp dropped toward -20C. I had to top the coolant up once during the winter, I assume because of this leak. Since I brought the car out of storage a few weeks ago I haven't had a problem with the leak and the coolant level has not dropped that I can notice. I've driven probably ~1000+ km (~700 mi) since the Vo came out of storage. I have all new hoses for the cooling system sitting in the basement waiting to be installed, but I haven't gotten a new rad yet. The heater control valve was replaced about 2 years ago, so there shouldn't be any problems there. When the engine was installed after the rebuild the cooling system was filled with Dex-Cool (big mistake). Within a couple months the headgasket had minor external coolant leaks. So, almost a year after the rebuild my mechanic replaced the headgasket and we refilled the cooling system with normal green coolant after the Dex-cool had been drained. Anyway, I don't know what to think of this possible heater core problem. My mechanic says we can tear some of the dash apart and see if we can see a leak, or we can block the coolant flow to the rad and see if the coolant smell goes away. I don't have a ton of money to go throwing at this, so I really don't want to replace the heater core if that's not the problem. Any advise/thoughts/etc? Thanks so much in advance and sorry for the long message!
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Chris. Halifax N.S. '91 745Ti, 288K km and '91 745 NA, 372K km.
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