All,

Had a rather peculiar discovery on my V12VS. Did a short drive today and after parking the car, there was a slight whiff of coolant outside the car on the driver's side.

Peeked under the hood and found this dislocated tension clamp. See orange arrow where it was and blue arrow where it should have be. This is right under the power steering reservoir where a coolant tube connects the bypass plastic hose to the expansion tank.

Fortunately the tube stayed on the end of the plastic bypass barb preventing an unfortunate incident. There was no coolant leak btw.

But what is puzzling to me is this. Given the tension of the clamp (and the tension is still very good), how did this clamp manage to "loosen and move itself" down stream?

Any feedback or thoughts welcomed.

 

That type of clamp does not "walk" out of place. What I see is it is "parked" where the hose, for whatever reason, was removed as part of some repair process and a tech, or whomever, simply forgot to place it back.

When you first smelled the coolant and discovered this clamp, was there any evidence of wet coolant around that area? Coolant doesn't evaporate very rapidly and if you could smell it you should have seen it too. From that pic I don't see evidence of a leak there.

Just my thoughts from this limited view.

 

There doesn't seem to be any compression marks on the hose or any marks on the clamp. Hard to believe that it's been like that for years and not leaked.

 

Appreciate the insights.

No evidence at all. Though the coolant smell I reckon could be the coolant cap. I cleaned the top part of the expansion tank and monitoring that for the next drive.

Good point. I just uploaded a picture with the clamp shifted back to its original place. If you stare hard enough, you can see a slight mark where it was. So it has been there for a while.

I think one of the dealers whom I brought the car to might have caused this. They were working on something related to the headlight and it has indeed been a while. If the tech did indeed forget to reinstall the clamp, I consider myself very lucky.

 

I can't imagine trying to work on these cars "on the clock". That is, as a mechanic trying to make money (vice an owner who likes working on cars). Sure, you are a professional and every action is deliberate and complete... But, you are paid by the rate, but get to work on whatever you can get to by the clock... Must be a crazy life. Someone forgot to come back and move that clamp to it's proper resting position....