I was driving from South Dakota to Colorado today for a week of vacation in the mountains with my family. The trunk was packed to the roof and everyone was tired of driving when I pulled into a gas station in Denver and noticed coolant leaking from the car. I popped the hood and started looking for the leak. Fortunately it was easy to find because the leak was still hissing as it spat coolant onto the ground. One of the hoses connected to the expansion tank was leaking at the fastener:
The coolant inside the expansion tank looked like it was boiling, so naturally I thought the car was overheating. I hadn’t seen any warnings on the dashboard, so I was hoping that I could pull up a temperature display. That’s when I made my first post to this thread, and of course discovered that it’s impossible to determine the coolant temperature without an aftermarket OBD reader (thanks, WunderWagen – I’ll have to pick one of those up before the drive back home).
So I thought now was a good time for a lunch break to let the engine cool and consider my options. By the time we were done with lunch, the expansion tank was empty and there was a pool of coolant under the car. I turned on the ignition (engine off) and saw this warning:
So at least the idiot lights work, but it turns out that this warning wasn’t all that helpful. The message looked pretty serious, so I started looking for a rental car location in Denver thinking I would drop the XC90 at the nearest dealer and repack everything in a rental so we could continue our vacation. Of course, every rental car company in Denver closes at 2:00pm on Sunday except for the locations at the airport. I thought about this a little more. Yes, I know the coolant is low, but exactly how low is it? The dashboard message doesn’t say, but I can see the size of the pool underneath the car and it looks to be roughly the same volume as the expansion tank, which was about halfway full when I stopped. So maybe the rest of the system is still full? If I knew what type of coolant this car uses I could top it off and see if the message goes away. Maybe the owner’s manual will tell me…
Nope! It turns out that the “Practical Information” section of the manual isn’t so practical after all. I would know what type of coolant to add only if I had a container of the proper coolant in front of me so I could read the label. But how would I get a container of the proper coolant? Oh, I know – tow the car to a dealer and wait until Monday morning when they would be happy to assist me.
So I drove a few blocks to an Autozone where a friendly worker was able to look up my model in his computer and tell me what type of coolant to use. After filling the expansion tank the message went away and I continued my trip with a gallon of coolant, a gallon of water and a funnel riding shotgun. I never saw another warning on the dashboard, but it sure would have been nice to monitor a temperature gauge as I climbed up and over the Continental Divide. I stopped a couple of times to check on the coolant level. It seems like it’s a steady leak and it’s not boiling over, so now I have to decide whether to drive it back to Denver to get fixed or order a new fastener via FedEx and install it myself.
I’d like to know what Volvo is thinking by dumbing down the instrumentation and owner’s manual. If something goes wrong, are we supposed to throw our hands in the air, call roadside assistance and let the dealer handle it?
/rant over