Thread: Broken radiator overflow nipple...can the car be driven still?

My experiences are mostly with BMW cooling systems which are notoriously bad, so i am probably more cautious than you guys.. but the hotter coolant gets, the more it expands.. having a gaping hole in your radiator is not good because you will lose fluid out of that hole and probably develop coolant bubbles very rapidly, causing the car to overheat more, causing the coolant to expand more.. yada yada.

How the system can keep pressure with a hole in it is beyond me. It does need pressure to function!

And you don't want a massive amount of air in your radiator because it will interfere with the top hose, etc.

I totally vouch for skcu's method.. it would work for a while.

Would i potentially overheat a 10-20 year old motor though.. hell no.

10 mins... :/ seriously yall?

neptronix what about running your car at 210* all the time and the hotter the better for gas mileage :P J/K

The car will be fine for a 10 minute trip.

I would just grab a soldering iron and a black zip tip and melt the ziptie in with the rad nylon. Just work it all the way around and melt into the rad plastic good and deep.

Epoxy wont hold against steam and you are risking cracking the plastic if you tap and thread in a new piece. That stuff is flimsy especially after 15-20 years. I shattered some just hand tightening a clamp for the rad hose.

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Yes that's right, remove the radiator cap and look at it, the radiator is sealed by the cap when its cold, but when it heats up the expansion of the water and some pressure overflow into the bottle, and then when it cools back down the cool coolant gets sucked back into the radiator from the overflow bottle
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You will be good, the worst you wil loose is a little bit from the top of the radiator, it actually won't be spewing out all over the place because it is on the other side of the radiator cap

This. The 2 part stuff. I did it on my SE-R back east and afaik the car is still running that same radiator 8 years later.

Well, thanks for the input guys, but I ended up just grabbing a Koyo.