Coolant below low line?

[humfrz]

Remember ..... if you add some coolant, use the "right stuff" - the blue stuff from Toyota or Subaru.

[Gords_zenith]

Originally Posted by Hawaiian

^This.

Almost everyone I know locally has no coolant in their reservoir after being parked all night, but after taking it for a drive it's gone back up. If you are empty after driving it there is a problem, but if you check your radiator and it's full to the top when cold, and some fluid goes to the reservoir after getting up to temp, there is nothing to worry about. Top it off if it makes you feel better.

The problem arises when you fill it up when it's cold and continue to monitor the levels when it's cold, the over fill reservoir will be trending down. Although it's not a significant amount that the reservoir holds buts it's the fact that coolant levels are declining. This reservoir level should never change as the coolant system is a sealed system. Coolant doesn't just evaporate. I think I've topped my truck up once in the 4 years of ownership and that was because I replaced the thermostat housing. So this tells me that A) the engine is burning coolant (unlikely) or B) there is small leak somewhere and it's not significant to puddle on the floor (likely - as it's over the coarse of 15000 km). I'm sure there are more reasons than that but I just finished nights so I'm too tired think of more than that.

Also, I got tired of trying to force my dealer to investigate it as they tried to tell me nothing is wrong and wouldn't even do a pressure test, even when I offered to pay for it. So I'm not sure of what to do now. I've even burped the system to see if it had some air still in the system from assembly. So I'll wait and see what happens and if anything should fail outside of warranty than at least they have it on record that I mentioned it to them.