A while back I noticed that if my bronco sat for several days I'd get just the tiniest amount of coolant dripping off the outside of the bellhousing.

Today it started leaving 2 puddles. The area where the lower intake manifold and left head come together, under the left injector rail has puddles of coolant that runs back and down off the bell housing. No hoses in that area and the coolant temp sensor is high and dry. Any clues about what the heck is leaking?

I've been poking around but can't narrow it to the source yet.

 

As u would imagine ,mine does the same thing if it sits for a week it might not even drop, two weeks might yield a puddle(small)when i run it it does for 5 days in a row no leaks .I feel its the lower back manifold gasket ,ive done a search and thats what my result yielded.Hadnt had time to work on this yet butt soon will follow up .When the truck sits gaskets get cold shrink up , they warm up seem to expand .Of course this is a uneducated guess Hope this helps TR

 

More than likely, it's your lower intake [to block] gasket. Mine developed a leak at about 140K miles. There are coolant passages that pass through the gasket. Mine failed so that coolant pooled up around the thermostat housing (although the housing and its gasket weren't leaking). If you need to change this, it's a good time to change valve cover gaskets, also, since the upper intake will need to come off anyway.

 

Darn, I was hoping for a quick and easy but I suspect you guys are right. That means the F.I. plenum has to come off first. Well, could be worse, when it was just a tiny drop here and there, I suspected the rear part of the left head gasket or a cracked head. I've been wanting to replace those leaky valve cover gaskets for a long time, and at the same time retrieve the cork oil cap gasket that cracked and fell into the left cover.

If it turns out to be the lower intake gasket, I may just pull the heads for a valve job. The Bronco runs good but at 120,000 it could probably use one. I'll dry the top end off and get a coolant pressure tester. That should narrow it down.

Thanks, and if anyone else has ideas I'd welcome them!

 

Good luck! FWIW, you may just want to consider the gasket swap, if that's all you really need. I'd have to wonder that a valve job at 120K (without doing anything to the lower end) wouldn't cause you more problems to come. Unless you know that your rings and lower end bearings are in good shape, I'd be afraid that the higher compression from the fresh valve job would be overly hard on the rest of the engine. IMHO, it may be best to save the $$$ for the valve job for when you'd be willing to pull the whole engine and put a few more dollars into a whole rebuild. In the meantime, fixing what's leaking (if it's only the intake and valve gaskets) might be all you'd want to mess with. The tests should tell you more......

 

Good advice. I don't hear much about valve work on this board so maybe that's a Bronco strong point. (Jeez, I'll take it!)

I'll run a compression check and rad pressure test for sure before getting out my wallet.

I'll let you know what I find out. Glad I have a spare get-to-work car.

This is a great board.

 

93' Bronco 5.0. After reading most of the relevant cooling topics I thought my problems were the most similar to this post. I just got to work and smelled AF. I look underneath and see the AF leak (not drip) from the bellhousing, and frame cross member. I am crossing my fingers and hoping I shook a bypass connection loose when I was crawling around underneath this morning. ( I just had in the shop last week to fix an oil leak) The connection I am hoping I shook loose comes from the water pump and runs parallel to the valve covers (lower). Left side if looking at the engine with the hood open. The connection initially goes into a black bulb assembly right from the water pump then goes to the rear and is located very close to the fire wall. I shook the hose in question because I found that it has a mount that is supposed to be bolted on somewhere underneath the engine/trans/exhaust manifold stud??? Needless to say it wasn't bolted/secured. OK after all this rambling ( I tried to be specific ) would it be safe to assume that if it was a gasket leak (intake or head) that I wouldn't have seen the puddle, more like a drip, that I saw when I first looked at the leak? BTW I too have been noticing a small loss of coolant over the last 3-4 months. See my previous post "Gurgling sound coming from dash". The water pump and T-stat housing were dry. I need to investigate further but I just thought I would shoot this message out and see what kind of response I get? The bypass connection I am mentioned earlier is called something else. Any ideas on its name? Any comments are appreciated. Thanks...B.B.