Driving home I decide to rev it up in 1st to about 4500 and let off a little to get into 2nd, and in doing so, I notice a nice puff of smoke out the rear view. didn't pay much attention until I smelled coolant. Then I saw a nice trail and as I swerved left and right, so did the trail.
I pulled into a parking lot (luckily 1 block away from a buddy's house) and coolant was all over the driver's side of the block only, and alot of steam from the same area. none in the front area, by the water pump, no hoses are broken, etc, but every bit of coolant ran out of the system. Also the fan was not running, so it didn't blow coolant to that area.
Are there any places for coolant to be leaking out of the block, like maybe a freeze plug or something?
help is greatly appreciated guys
Thanks in advance,
Jeff

 

I have a leak at my intake manifold gasket. You could have the same thing, but mine doesn't leak like that. It's ever so slight.

-The Gunny

 

Ahh i wish. I checked all over the top of the motor and around the injectors and all is dry as a bone.

 

If youre car still has the heater core in place and functioning with all of the hoses and stuff it could be the Heater Control Valve (or diverter valve).This is a small plastic box that one of the heater hoses goes into and it has a couple of smaller hoses coming out of it.On my car it is towards the front of the engine on the passenger side,rite above the valve cover.It happened to me,my intake has had a small coolant leak for a while,one day while I was driving all of this steam came out around the hood when I stopped at a stop sign.I opened the hood and there was antifreeze everywhere,I couldnt even tell where it was coming from,I figured my intake gasket went from a slow leak to this.After it cooled down and I was able to investigate it further I found that the plastic on the heater control valve just broke off dumping out all of the coolant.There was just a post made on this exact thing on 9/29 by rocky383.Luckily for me it happened down the street from my house because it dumped ALL of the coolant out . Good luck!

 

90, thanks for the reply, but that's one of the first things I checked, and no broken hoses or housings of any sort. I gotta work tomorrow, guess I'll check more Sunday.

 

My car did the exact same thing.
When you let off at high RPM, intake manifold press goes very low (i.e. high vacuum). In my case, a piece of intake gasket was sucked into the #7 intake runner. The missing piece of gasket allowed coolant to enter the runner. The high vacuum will empty the coolant sys quick. The smoke show was very impressive! NASCAR quality!
When I shut it off, it started leaking externally out the intake gasket on the rear of eng near the #7 cyl.
When I removed the intake, the gasket was hard and crumbling. Probably from getting it really hot (260+) a couple of times I guess.

 

Thanks ZZ, I'll check that out tomorrow!

 

Well it turns out it was the block heater. One of the little tabs that holds it in broke off and it popped out of the block a little. I tried to replace it with a regular freeze plug, but there was not enough space to hammer it in, so I had to install a new block heater.

 

I was going to Say, I lost the freeze plug above the starter in a similar fashion one day.

Who put a block heater in your car ? lol

 

Bort, It's common to have a block heater in most cars up here in Canada, especially on the praries where it dips to -40deg C. But most cars in B.C wouldn't have them, doesn't get cold enough here. I know, to most people 'plugging in' a car sounds ridiculous.