Coolant level

[Walaboom]

Hello guys, I have a question and I cant seem to find the answer any where.

What will happen if you add too much fluid into the coolant overflow tank, I meant over the max mark while the engine is cold? Will this cause car to smoke a lot or will those fluid just stay in the overflow tank?

The reason i am asking is because lately, my car exhaust was smoking like crazy, I did the compression check, it is perfect, no oil in the radiator or coolant overflow tank, oil doesn't look milky, but I did happen to add too much coolant in the overflow tank, it is about 1 and half inch above "max".

Is this what is causing my white smoke from the exhaust or should I look into something else?

Thanks for the help.

[NISTECH]

If you are not loosing coolant or coolant level is not dropping in the overfolw bottle you are not burning coolant. perhaps your running rich and the smoke your seeing is fuel vapor. The over flow marks are not really all that important. What the max and min are for is a basic area to set your coolant level. The idea is to set it to the minimum level when the car is cold. then as it warms up and expansion in the engine takes place the fluid level in the bottle will rise ,not much and not enough to even hit the max line in the bottle. If you were to over fill the bottle to the point it was a problem, the only problem you would have is coolant overflowing out the bottle when expansion in the engine takes place. Basically you would just have a mess to clean up. It certainly couldnt cause any harm to the engine.

[JoeKansas]

Would have no effect on the engine operation. What would happen would be the engine would get to operating temperature, coolant would expand and be forced out of the resevoir onto the ground- out the overflow.

[NISTECH]

yep it would do that till it disposed of the over abundant amount of coolant in the overflow bottle. Then it would just expand and contract within the bottles capacity.

[Walaboom]

So i can safely assume that my white smoking coming out from the exhaust is not due to having too much fluid in the overflow tank?

The reason I am asking is because I added too much fluid in there, white smoke came out from exhaust like crazy, after awhile, coolant got burn to the level just right below "max" mark on my overflow tank and suddently the car doesn't smoke anymore, that's what made me think too much coolant in the overflow tank is causing more forced into the radiator/engine due to the fluid compression.

I guess I would have to start looking for something else....maybe a bad water pump? I am really out of idea at this moment..

[NISTECH]

No the overflow bottle does not push coolant into the system. It has no way to build pressure to do that.

But you say some things that indicate you are loosing coolant. Like burn down to max line and maybe bad waterpump?? Is your coolant level repetitivly dropping? Are you seeing any coolant on the ground? is your car overheating?

[Walaboom]

Coolant level only drop from overmax to "max" mark, while it was dropping, it was smoking like crazy in the exhaust. After it drops below the max mark, it doesn't smoke or drop anymore.

[NISTECH]

How quickly did it drop? was the car running or off? The engine should only pull coolant from the bottle when it is shut off . It does it slowly over several hours.