I was at a friends house this afternoon..... and when i was leaving i noticed alot of fluid on the ground....i looked under the front of the car and saw it was coming near the back of the car and first feared it was tranny fluid.....but upon further inspection i noticed it was coolant leaking from the back of the motor... i figured it was most likely a freeze plug...just checking to see what you guys think? thanks

 

Could be a freeze plug, could be a gasket.

 

How would i check to see which it is??

 

Visual inspection

Of the motor, not the monitor

 

You might see coolant leaking from the rear freeze plugs if you take the inspection cover off and look behind the flywheel/flexplate.

If it was a gasket, you'd be able to find coolant leaking from the top of the engine at the rear around where the heads, block and intake meet each other.

 

you can also get a test kit that contains chemicals that detect exhaust components in the coolant. This only works if the gasket is blown between a jacket and the chamber though. Drain the oil, if it's milky that will tell you too. Hard to believe it would be a freeze plug this time of year seeing as how it hasn't been that cold lately.

 

Freeze plugs fail due to corrosion, not freezing. If the coolant froze there would be much bigger things to worry about.

 

They'll also fail if it freezes. That type of failure is more common than just corrosion. It's rare that corrosion would eat all the way through a plug, and even if it's corroded around the perimeter of the plug something would have needed to cause it to shift before it starts leaking. Unless the cooling system was severely neglected.

 

This whole car has been severly neglected...the coolant system especially.... when the previous owner even bothered to put anything but water in it...it had Dex Cool coolant in it(which ive always heard will corrode system very badly...and it did to my dads S-10)...also has a radiator off a 6cyl Olds cutlass...so its a tad small and tends to boil alot (new radiator on the way)

being 17 & working at a McDonalds im not exactly raking in the bucks....but in about a year i HOPE to have a pretty bad 3rd gen

Thanks for the help guys

 

Coolant doesn't freeze unless it's severely neglected.