While I was installing some LED's, I took off the panel under the dash above the passenger foot well. I found a little bit of coolant sitting there, but there is none on the carpet. My heater core was replaced 30,000 miles ago and 3 years ago. Could this just be coolant that was never cleaned up or is my heater core bad?

Thanks for any help

 

Hmm, I would soak up what is there and recheck after you start the car up, and see what happen. Good luck

 

Have your cooling system pressure tested and see if it still leaks.

 

when my heater core went on me over the summer i found a decent pool of coolant on the passenger side mat that was dripping from that panel. i hope this helps.

 

I don't think the antifreeze would sit there for three years. But like mark said, clean it up and see if it magically appears again. I hope it doesn't, but I think it will. Good luck.

 

certainly sounds like a heater core.

they're really not as hard as people say to replace them. i've done two, the first in 90 minutes and the second time in 45.

despite what some manuals tell you:

DO NOT take the whole passenger dash apart. only that lowest panel. just have enough extensions/universal joints around, esp for the top center bolt on the cover. magnetic are good, but the 12" flexible extension was the best. if you don't have magnetic, use a little piece of tape to hold the screw to the socket as you try to set the top center bolt putting it together.

DO NOT drain the cooling system. just pinch the hoses or turn them upwards quickly. the'yre the highest point in the system, you'll make very little mess at all.

DO tape a garbage bag over your carpet before starting. sometimes fluid will sit in the cover and only leak when you take it out. or you may have to turn the core to get it out and it could drip.

if you have problems getting the hoses off the old core (i did on the 88 but not the '92 because of the kinds of clips used):

make a small saw out of a whole or partial hacksaw blade, either with a small handle or just with a little chunk of wood/plastic and some duct tape (so you can saw w/o cutting up your hands). just cut the tubes off at the firewall, and take the remnants out of the hoses after.

DO get screw-type hose clamps to put on after. those pinch-type ones from the factory are awful if they get into the wrong position where you can't get a big enough tool on them to widen them up enough to get them off.

 

The water in the coolant will evaporate, but the glycol will never evaporate. It can sit there for fifty years. If it wasn't cleaned up thoroughly after the last core failure, it will still be there. The foam sound insulation pad glued to the back of the trim panels makes a great spronge to hold the glycol. You'll have to rinse everything with warm/hot water to dissolve the coolant and blot up the excess with towels or suck it up with a wet/dry vacuum to get it all. I had a really fun time cleaning up my 23,000 mile-old carpet in my 23,000 mile-old TA when the core let go. I still get a whiff of coolant odor when I let the car warm up with the heater on (like last weekend). Everything is dry that I can see, but I know there is a film of glycol in there somewhere. I hate the idea of removing the ductwork to clean it out just to remove a coolant film.

Make sure the coolant level maintains and you have no leakage. Clean up the remaining traces of glycol, and keep an eye on the situation just in case you have another leaker.