A constant leak like this can lead to chronic overheating and potential damage to your engine components. The seal would degrade over time and seep coolant all over the exhaust heat shielding and sometimes the exhaust itself. This isn’t my exact tank, but it was a common problem with the R53 Mini Cooper S. This is a problem I personally experienced. Overheating from a coolant leak would definitely be on the top 10 most frustrating ways to cut a track day short or even bring your commute to a screeching halt. Here the pressure released from the hot coolant fills the top half of the tank and acts as a force to push the coolant back into the system.Ĭoolant works best when it actually stays in the cooling system. Instead of sending the expanding coolant to the tank once it reaches a certain pressure, the coolant is always cycled through the radiator and out to the expansion tank. The cooling system is constantly under pressure with the use of an expansion tank.
Cooling systems that use expansion tanks will have the pressurized radiator cap located on the expansion tank rather than the radiator. In fact, the radiator is lacking any sort of cap or fill neck in most cases since you fill coolant from the tank. With this configuration, the tank is always under pressure, and your pressure-rated cap is located on the tank rather than on the radiator itself. The expansion tank, or degas bottle as it’s referred to in the diesel realm, is a bit more complex. Pictured is the factory expansion tank from the FK8 Civic Type-R, or the lesser version of the title image. … Expansion Tanks Expansion tanks are a little more complex. This lower pressure creates a vacuum and pulls the coolant from the overflow tank back into the cooling system via the small valve inside of the radiator cap. Once the vehicle cools down, the pressures naturally want to equalize. That small tab in the center is a one-way valve that allows the coolant to return to the radiator after the pressure in the system returns to a regular level. This allows any steam and excess coolant to pass through the line and into your overflow tank and remain in there until the temperature in the system drops. As the pressure from the hot coolant builds and exceeds the rating of the radiator cap, it will compress the larger spring to expose the overflow port. Note that the cap has a large spring underneath with a small tab in the center. This system also relies heavily on the pressure created by the expanding coolant. The best way to determine if your vehicle is using an overflow tank would be to find out if your radiator is sporting a pressure rated cap, since this is what determines when the coolant starts flowing between the cooling system and the tank. (Image/Summit Racing)Īn overflow tank can also be referred to as a recovery tank and is the simpler system of the two. The hot coolant is transferred back and forth between the tank depending on the pressure emitted from the hot coolant. Overflow Tanks The overflow tank typically has one or sometimes two ports. The end result was two different types of tanks that are used to do just that. Back in the day, this hot coolant would just be vented to the atmosphere (the ground to be precise), but in the spirit of keeping our one earth intact, automakers designed tanks to catch and reuse the expanding coolant. When it comes to coolant specifically, it also creates steam and gas pressure that needs somewhere to go. This might take you back to high-school chemistry, but things expand when they get hot. Nowadays, just about everything in the engine stays there and is recycled in some way, including the very liquid that keeps those cylinders at the appropriate temperature. As environmental restrictions tightened, manufacturers had to develop ways to keep the byproducts of the internal combustion and cooling chemicals inside of the car. It was great for the cars, but not so great for the world around us (sorry ozone). Just dribbling coolant and blow-by all across the roadways. No PCV or CCV lines, and no catalytic converters. Back in the infancy of liquid-cooled engines, nearly all emissions systems would vent chemicals and harmful vapors into the atmosphere.
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