Coolant leak, have I fixed it?

I was having an issue with fairly fast coolant "consumption" which I finally pegged to the lower heater hose spraying coolant on shutdown. I tightened the hose clamp and that seemed to stop it. But my question is whether the high pressure on shutdown squirting out there is a symptom of a problem elsewhere. Should I be concerned and what if anything else should I be checking?



1998 4.0 btw.

If it has no other issues (overheating or anything) I would probably not be very worried.maybe test or replace the cap but other than that I'd say you're ok.

I had this problem as well but it only happened intermittently. I changed the cap several times. It finally stopped happening when I replaced the radiator which was a bit clogged

MickeyS said:

I had this problem as well but it only happened intermittently. I changed the cap several times. It finally stopped happening when I replaced the radiator which was a bit clogged

Click to expand...

Brand new radiator at the same time as the engine. Sounds like I should replace the cap for fun and then stop worrying.

I never checked cooling system pressure after shut down, so I can't quantify pressure rise as a corollary to heat soak, but, there it is:

When your engine reaches operating temperature, a functioning cooling system extracts heat as long as there is air is moving across the radiator, and the "water pump" circulates coolant through the system. Shut off the engine, your heat extraction is diminished, while the coolant inside the block gets hotter. When the coolant gets hotter, the pressure should rise.

That is the simple explanation.

Pressure rise makes sense in that situation, I'm just trying to rule out a problem where that pressure isn't released by sending the coolant into the overflow bottle before it harms some other component. Bad cap makes sense for that based on my limited understanding of the coolant loop.