Has anyone had this problem? I am not positive that it is coolant, but my wife's car seems to have a very slow coolant leak and the carpet either drys very slowly or something is leaking onto it. I have the VIP (which until now has been useless) for another 4,000 miles. Is this something that would be covered? It is going into the dealer (also useless) next week.

Thanks!

Mike

Just curious, how many miles on this car? 3 years old with a bad heater core? Really losing faith in Volvo's.

It just passed 70,000. It is a Coral Red T-5. I never get to drive it - my wife does not like my Yukon.

Wow, drive much? ;-)

Thanks to everyone who replied!

Mike

Mike,

I had the same problem a while ago. Driver side foot well carpet was soaked with "Green" coolant. I also had VIP, it was covered by VIP. I only paid the $25 deductible. Dealer told me that they replaced the heater core which was right behind the radio.

The coolant took a long time to go away even after I washed the carpet.

Ching-Ho Cheng

I've seen where it wasn't the heater core but one of 4 internal pipe o-rings. Remove the left lower panel, then the plastic cover to the right of your gas pedal. It's likely to be a bad pipe o-ring (2 pipes go between the heater core and firewall connector), more likely that than a heater core and those pipes can be removed without removing the dash as I've done it.

The bad part is that if enough coolant has already saturated the padding under the carpet, it's a nightmare trying to get rid of the mini-lake of coolant. We had a car last summer that had that happen to it and there was so much coolant under there that it required all new carpeting and padding as it was ruined. Fortunately for you it's still warranty.

Select defroster, turn the temperature up high and the fan speed to high. Purse your lips together and breath in through your mouth, if you detect a slight 'sweetness' most likely it is antifreeze and the heater core or hose is leaking. Also, if the inside of the windows have a 'glaze' on them that streaks when you try to wipe it off, you have coolant being blown up onto the windshield via the defroster vents. I'm experiencing this problem in a 780. I may try a 'stop-leak' additive as an interim fix.

I agree with you both, it sounds like a heater core leak if it really is coolant.

As for your "test" for a coolant leak, that's pretty interesting. Where/how/when did you come up with this? Sounds like it would only work if the concentration of coolant in the car's interior in vapour form was high enough though.

Sounds like your heater core is leaking.

yep, heater core is the best guess. I'd avoid stop leak products myself though, for too often, the leak is fixed, but the rest of the cooling system gets plugged too