Well, the 1998 T-5 left my son stranded this weekend about 150 miles from home. He was driving on the freeway when he noticed the low coolant light come on. He started to look for a place to pull over and noticed the temperature gauge going up quickly. By the time he could safely pull over and shut it off the needle had been in the red zone for about 30 seconds. Anyway, I went up for a rescue and when I got there, I found that the outlet for the upper radiator hose had snapped off flush with the radiator. I dug the boken piece out of the hose and it looks like at some point in the past, someone had pried the hose off with a screwdriver and had hairline cracked the plastic outlet. Anyone ever seen that before?

Got a new radiator on order, so the fun of R & R ing it will begin. Any tips or gotcha's I need to be aware of? On the plus side, when we went to pull the car on the rollback (after a 4 hour wait for a tow), it started up normally, no smoke, funny noises, etc, and the oil looked fine, not burnt, so I think she is none the worse for wear.

 

Separate and support the a/c condenser and remove the intercooler and radiator as one piece.