I smell anti-freeze

[solarys]

Help needed! The last few days I have smelt anti-freeze, when I get out of my car. Today, the fan sounds louder than it ever did. I check under hood, and see anti-freeze at bottom of engine, when looking straight down right behind the dccv valve. I am clueless where the anti-freeze is coming from. All I know at this point, is I smell and see it. The temp alarm came on for a second, then went off. Hasn't been on since. The hot/cold indicator rose to 10 o'clock, then drop down to normal position. Something tells me, I had better act on this now, with winter approuching. Any idea, what could the real problem here? Again, the source of the leak is not easy to spot. The top front area of the engine is dry.

 

[solarys]

The car in question is a 2K5 3.0 Lincoln LS.

 

[Lincoln Jealous]

crack in the degas bottle

 

[joegr]

While the degas bottle is almost certainly on of the several plastic parts that you need to replace, it's not responsible for a leak up near the radiator.
I'm not too familiar with the V6, but I assume that it has plastic tees and such on it's radiator hoses. Check all of those. If one is leaking, all should be replaced. (You'll regret it if you don't. Once one fails, the others aren't far behind.)
It also possible that it's the DCCV itself, the radiator side tanks, or some of the plastic cooling system parts on the engine.

 

[1LoudLS]

its got to be either where you can see the antifreeze or slightly in front of it, but is AF is leaking out then air is probably leaking in and you will have overheating issues because of it

 

[solarys]

I added a whole gallon of anti-freeze today. Which tells me I have a serious leak somewhere. The top front half of my engine is dry. Again, I see anti-freeze on the bottom. Is there anything I can do to tell where leak is coming from, other then seeing the obvious leak? Any type of colored solution?

 

[SoonerLS]

Coolant dyes are available; I Googled "radiator dye" and the first hit was a $5 2-pack at Amazon; you can probably find it at a similar price at your friendly local auto parts store. I also found a link to a post on DIY coolant dye, but I'm not sure how hi-lighter ink would behave in the LS's coolant system (the one I found was for a water-cooled computer ). You can get a cheap battery-operated blacklight at your local pet store; just look in the area with the pet urine clean-up chemicals. (Mine is branded Stink-Finder, and it was invaluable in tracking down the leaks in my F-150's A/C.)

 

[Frogman]

Help needed! The last few days I have smelt anti-freeze, when I get out of my car.

Don't inhale when you get out of the car. Problem solved.