Rant: That one Tuesday where three different cars came in with the same weird coolant leak

It was this past Tuesday, and by 2 PM I had seen three separate vehicles, a Honda, a Ford, and a Chevy, all with coolant pooling in the exact same spot near the water pump... but the pumps themselves were fine. Turns out they all had hairline cracks in the thermostat housing, a part I hadn't seen fail that often. I spent the whole afternoon explaining the same diagnosis to three different worried customers. Has anyone else noticed a run on bad thermostat housings lately, or was that just a freak day?

3 comments

3 Comments

bennett.nora1mo ago

Freak day for sure. Those housings almost never go bad, you just got weirdly lucky. Probably a bad batch of plastic from years ago all hitting their breaking point at once.

richard_anderson1mo ago

Wow, that makes total sense! I remember reading a forum post a while back about a specific run of sensor housings from like 2012 that were brittle. @bennett.nora might be right about a bad batch. The post said they'd just crack around the mounting tabs for no clear reason, usually in the same exact spot.

rodriguez.felix1mo ago

Man, remember when that one company had the whole thing with bad plastic in their dashboards? Like, they'd just crumble into dust after a few summers in the sun. Makes you wonder what else from that era is just waiting to fall apart on us, lol.