Hey y'all, This is my first post on this forum after browsing for quite some time. I have a 150k mile 2005 g35 that I take pretty good care of.

Over the past 2 days I've noticed my heater not turning on when I would set it to 90 and would only blow cold air, and suddenly yesterday as I was driving home after getting some gas, steam just randomly started exploding out of my hood and my temp gauge was rising to the max. I pulled over and popped the hood to see what was going on, I saw coolant all over the underside of the hood and splattered over other various parts of the engine bay. I ended up filling it with water and driving home because I was less than a mile away.

Today I went out to check the coolant level to see if it was still holding any liquid, and all of the water that I had put in the day before was gone. Tried putting some more water in to see if i could spot a leave and I could see it coming out of the upper left side of the radiator below where you fill it. I looked for where the leak was coming from but I couldn't find it, I didn't spend too much time on it today because it was getting dark.

I'm not entirely sure what needs to be done. I don't know if its a crack somewhere in the radiator or a leaky hose, or something else entirely. If anyone has any ideas of what this could be please let me know. I have some general knowledge about cars but I'm far from a mechanic. Let me know if you want anymore info on the car or any of the problems that I'm experiencing. Thanks!

 

Something ruptured, get a good flashlight and an inspection mirror and find out EXACTLY where it's coming from. With the rate it's leaking coolant it should be easy to find.

If you don't feel confident about replacing a radiator or a radiator hose it might be better to just load up a few gallons of water into the trunk and drive it to your favorite mechanic. Just make sure to pull over and fill it up BEFORE IT OVERHEATS otherwise you are risking blowing the engine.

I don't typically recommend using a towel over the radiator cap to unscrew it while the engine is hot (it blows out boiling water, the towel catches most of it just fold the towel up a few times and be SUPER careful, it's your ***...) but I usually will refill a radiator with the engine hot if I know it's leaking coolant anyways, there will be gas pressure but the liquid level is typically too low to blow out actual liquid if it's low.