Please help him !!...... coolant leak

My friend has RS 60 spider, the special Boxter as you know. He has an experience of unknown leak of coolant now. One day he has found the decrease of coolant ,the amount of unknown loss is 130cc! To make matters worse, he was shocked to encounter the picture of the engine room as attachments here he took. It looks as if somone scattered the coolant in the engine bay. The mechanic of Porsche service center couldn't find out the crack of subtank nor the loosening of pipes concerned. It is misterious . He is still annoyng and quitely depreseed now. Does anyone help him and explain why leak?

When I changed my Air Filter (At 1,200 miles) for a BMC one, when the 'Yellow Peril' was New - I found exactly the same thing.......... The only thing I noted, was the fact that I could turn the Blue Cap shown in the photos about an 1/8th of a turn more to be fully tight - I cleaned the engine bay up - and since then have no more issues. I believe that the Blue Cap, was not closed completely - and under pressure the fluid spurted out past the seal.............

Nice photos of the problem and the engine bay. However, I am probably more interested to see the outside of his car! But really, this is quite troubling. May I know how did u friend realize he had coolant leak problem? Was it due to higher engine temperature? And how did he know exactly how much coolant was lost??

Seems to be a common problem. Here's what I found when I opened up my engine bay in May I tighten the cap and topped off the coolant. After 6000 miles and 4 track days I noticed the coolant drop about 1/4 of an inch to right at the min level of the refill sprout in the trunk. I just had my 1 yr service and mentioned this, so they topped it off with about 1/8 of a cup of coolant. I will take the cover off again soon to check.

Tayman, thank you for your quick response! >May I know how did u friend realize he had coolant leak problem? OK,but this is a little complicated story. He ,and I have many friends by Blogs of Cayman . One of our Blog members introduced how important the check of coolant level and my friend did it , and found the loss of coolant by chance. He added water by a cup with gauge .... it showed 130cc . He thought it might be something wrong with his car and went to the Porsche service. He told the mechanic about the coolant loss and the mechanic checked his car,but nothing was wrong. After that ,a salesman of the service center picked up the car and drove amoment , and returned. Suddenly ,as he OPENED the cap of the coolant ,though the engine was too hot yet, a part of coolant sprang out to the floor. My friend was surprised and looked into the engine room. He found the " already dried "scatterd scar of coolant like the attachment photos. He was sure there had been coolant leak before.

I did that accidentally too the first time I went to check the coolant when the engine was still warm. I've opened the coolant tank caps in my other cars while the engine was warm and never had an issue. With this car, the engine had been off for about 20 minutes or so. As I began to loosened the cap, I started hearing hissing and fluid seeping out so I quickly tightened it and left it alone until much later. Some coolant came out and leaked into the drain hole of the oil/coolant compartment. The leaked coolant made a horrible hissing sound as it hit some of the hot parts if the engine before draining into the ground. I remember seeing a post somewhere here that someone did the same thing opening the outer cap with the engine warm and seeing some coolant spray back in the engine compartment due to the pressure change. They had the engine cover off when they did this. That's why I sort of expected some dried coolant around when I opened up the engine cover a few weeks later. Your third photo shows some coolant still sitting in the engine compartment. This could have been the back spray from when you loosened the front cap. Don't ask me why this happens, I'm just going by memory from something I saw on this board. Now you have me curious about how my engine bay looks now since I did have a slight drop in the coolant level. This is when the clear engine cover will come in handy!

This is what I saw when I installed my IPD plenum last year (about 11 months after getting my Cayman):

Just HOW did you manage to publish your picture 'Inside Out'........?

Wow...should this coolant thing be a thing of concern? I mean, we are scheduled to bring in the car for servicing not more than once a year. Do we have to monitor this or if it does overheat and blow, just depend on the warranty? Is this how it is supposed to be?

I had "low coolant" issues recently and had to add about 6 cups of coolant to top off. When I brought my CS to the dealer they couldn't find the problem after pressurizing the system but did tell me the system had to be flushed because I didn't use Porsche coolant. To make a long story short, it turned out to be the coolant cap that was leaking so it didn't show up in the pressure test. This O ring on the cap was bad and would like under pressure.

Thank you for many kind "answers". Most members point out that the coolant cap itself has a problem and it has something to do with the unknown leakage of the coolant. Well, what should I do to solve the problem now? Has Porsche already made any efforts and served us a "new " cap not to leak? Or,all we can do now is only "observation" of the course ?

I dunno. This concerns me but not enough to want to open up the engine cover and check it. I leave all this to my dealer and will refer any problems to warranty claims. I see that u have a GT3. Plus ur fren has a CS spyder. I think u guys are well-heeled / rich enough not to have to worry too much about these things and leave it to your dealer or someone else to sort out for you.