How to Find Coolant Leak 2007-13 Mini Cooper S

Mike: Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years.

What's up, guys? I'm Andy from 1A Auto. In this video, we're going to check some coolant leaks on this 2007 Mini Cooper S. If you need any parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description and head over to 1aauto.com.

The coolant reservoir is located right here. If we had a coolant pressure tester, we would want to add an adapter here and pressurize the system to find a coolant leak. We are noticing some coolant on the ground, so we wanted to find out where the actual leak is coming from. Pressure tester would make that leak worse so it would be easier to find, but this coolant leak's pretty bad so we're going to lift the vehicle up and take a look where it's coming from.

Okay, now we're underneath the vehicle. If I had any coolant in this front area, we'd want to check the radiator and make sure any of the coolant hoses in that area aren't leaking. There's a coolant hose right here. Your vehicle might have a panel right here. You're going to want to take that off. Everything looks dry in this area right here. We noticed, as we come back a little bit on the oil pan, we actually see some coolant right there. If you look down on the ground, we have a nice puddle of coolant. We're going to want to check out this area back here and see what we can find back there.

From underneath the vehicle, it's a little bit hard to see, but there's a water pump right there in that area. If you come in through this side right here you can see right there, that's part of the water pump, that's the housing of the water pump. If you look underneath it, it doesn't appear to be leaking, but there is coolant right next to it in the housing.

If you see further back, it's a little bit hard to see, maybe from underneath here, there's actually a crossover pipe. It's plastic up there. It appears that that is what's actually leaking, not the water pump. Be careful, if you have a coolant leak somewhere in this area, your first instinct is probably going to be that it needs a water pump, but it could also be that crossover pipe, which that's what's leaking in our case.

Some other things you want to check: coolant reservoir. Coolant reservoir could be leaking or cracked. Some of these hoses could be leaking or cracked. There's an upper radiator hose that comes and goes around underneath here, so you're going to want to check that. Then also on the back side. There's some heater box. Heater hoses that go into the firewall. You're going to want to check those as well.

In our Mini, the actual leak is coming from the crossover pipe that goes right here. This goes into that housing that the water pump was attached to, so either the seal is broken right there or the pipe is cracked. Another thing you want to keep in mind, it could be something in the thermostat housing. This is where the thermostat is. You could have a bad seal. Another thing to check would be any head gaskets leaking.

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