I check the antifreeze today and I was low. To my amazement, I was down a gallon (I thought I checked it in the past month or two). I have not seen any antifreeze on the ground and the exhaust is not smoking.

Also, I did check the oil and it is black and not overfilled, so I do not think it is in the engine.

In the past, I have had a sparkplug on the driver side sitting in a little bit of antifreeze. That was due to a known issue with a hose that would leak.

Is that something that would cause it to slowly leak?

 

After driving around the last couple of days, I have noticed the smell of antifreeze in the vents when the vents are running or the heat is turned on. When I have the A/C running, there is no smell.

What can that be? HeaterCore?

 

More likely than not, yes. The antifreeze is probably dripping out of the condensate tube when you're driving, so you never see any drips.

 

This same problem happened to my truck. I was losing coolant and I couldn’t figure out what it was. When I finally found it, it was leaking near the heater core and I really didn't want to replace the heater core so I looked at a couple products to see if anything would be able to fix the leak. I found a product called Bars Leak, it said it could fix the leak permanently; I was a skeptic if this product would work but it was only 10 dollars so it was worth a try. To my amazement it worked great, I changed the coolant and added this in with it thought the upper radiator hose. I followed the directions and the it has never leaked again. It has been well over a year now and I am very pleased with the product, I would give it a try.

Bar's Leaks Liquid Aluminum Stop Leak

 

Did your heat output get reduced? Are you in the north or south?

 

The heat appears to be just as hot as before. However, it is hard to say, as it has been 90 degrees outside.

I am in Minnesota and the truck has rust on the underside.

To find the leak at the heater core, how did you do that? I believe the heater core is on the passenger side near the firewall. Do I need to take off the plastic housing on the inside of the truck?

Will barsleak cause any issues with the radiator?

 

It's an 8-12 hour job to replace the heater core. The entire dash has to be removed.

 

I have noticed some white smoke out of the tailpipe when I start the truck after it has been sitting overnight. It will smoke for the first 5 seconds. The smoke goes away, but may come back after awhile when idling.

 

You may want to have your anti-freeze tested for hydrocarbons. It is possible it is sucking it into the cylinders and not getting into the oil.

 

How do you test for hydrocarbons? What does it mean if there is hydrocarbons?

 

A sample of the coolant can be tested by some parts store or garages. If there are hydrocarbons, it would indicate combstion gases are present. This would check for blown gaskets etc.

 

A special gas meter is needed for this. The meter uses a UV lamp and a Photo Ionizing Detector. The UV lamp breaks down the ions of a range of particular hydrocarbons in the atmosphere being sampled. This particular hydrocarbon range can vary dependent of the voltage of the UV lamp being used which if I remember right generally is the 9.8 V lamp. These hydrocarbons being sampled are commonly know as Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOC's for short. Once the atmosphere has been broken down into its ions, the photo ionizing detector detects these ions and displays a reading of these hydrocarbon compounds in the Parts Per Million range, or PPM for short. The best way to explain what a PPM is, lets say a bucket of sand has a Million particles of sand in it, if you take 10 particles of sand out of this bucket that would be 10 parts per the million of the sand in the bucket. So these meters are reading very small concentrations of hydrocarbons. These meters are not something the average person can afford as they're a bit pricy. But this is probably a little more than you wanted to know. I have access to these meters at work, but I'm sure you're to far away to have me test your system.