Leaking Radiator - How far can my heroes drive?

If the car is overheating, you can vent some of the heat by rolling down the windows and cranking the heater to high. Are they in the middle of a chase, or is this more of an endurance situation where they need to make it from point a to point b with no ticking clock? If possible, they can take the hood off (or leave it up and navigate with a head out the window) to vent heat that way, too.

How old is the car? Make / model? What kind of damage? A crack or something like a gunshot? Slow leak, or did they bust a plastic end cap off the radiator?

Do they have anything to pour in the radiator to keep it going? Even soda (if they don't care about long-term damage) Any way to plug the leak? Duct tape? Medical tape from a first aid kit?

This is the kind of question that necessitates details.

Assuming an older pickup, a crack in a radiator housing will lose coolant more quickly as temps and pressure rise. Five-ten miles, even limping along, is doubtful. If you need that distance, minimize the leak; damage to a smaller area of cooling fins might start seeping as temps & pressure rise, then spew steam, etc. Eventual overheating and stalling is inevitable. You can use the growing cloud of steam to help ratchet tension.

One thing confuses me . . . How do you crack the radiator from the rear?

What's the terrain like? Is there any chance you could pick a different kind of damage? Maybe a bad starter on an old pick-up, or a bad alternator, even a damaged battery? That way, if they stopped and hid in the trees or whatever for a few minutes to get their bearings and made the mistake of turning the engine off, it won't come back on.

Totally depends on the size of the hole, make the hole fit the story. You can also plug some radiator holes, or partially plug it. Assuming they can't buy leak repair, they can use a number of things to plug the holes from the outside like stuffing a sock in it. It won't stop the leak but it can slow it down.


Given they are in a city, they could get any number of things on their way out of town to plug the leak. I'm thinking smash and grab something.

M.C.Statz said:

Radiator cracked from rear end. Chase situation, no time to pull over. Car is an older pickup. Exact details can be massaged, what would be perfect is if the engine seizes after 5-10 miles

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Then write it that way.

Jeff

A nicked radiator hose might get you to the same end result a little slower. And/or, depending on your terrain, a looong downhill slope might help with the final distance.

If you want the car to limp along for a while, make it a smaller leak. It doesn't have to be anything dramatic to make a car overheat eventually, and as an engine heats up (and the pressure increases) the rate of coolant loss will increase.

When I was in college, I had a very used pickup truck (71 Datsun with 150k miles on it) with a leaky radiator, and I didn't notice it overheating until I was more than halfway home (between the bay area and Sacramento, so maybe 40-50 miles--I suspect the increase in temperature once we were out of the bay area, and climbing over the hills, accelerated the loss of coolant too). Once that happened, though, the temperature gauge progressed into the red very quickly, and by the time I made it to an off ramp and pulled off, the head gasket was cracked (there were no cell phones back then, so being stalled on the side of a freeway was bad news). The car was still idling raggedly, but coolant was dripping out of the tailpipe. I doubt I'd have gotten more than another mile on it at that point.

It did no permanent damage to the rest of the engine, however, and once the head gasket and radiator were replaced, it ran like new. That was one tough little truck.

Bear in mind that the engine isn't going to die suddenly from seizure. Once it starts overheating badly, it will start popping and misfiring, and it will incur a sever power loss before it quits completely. So you might be able to drive five miles, but those last three or four are going to be slow going.

My first car died from a leaky radiator. Once the radiator was empty, the engine overheated and it blew the head gasket. Copious amounts of white steam were pouring out of the engine and the exhaust. I got out of the car, went 100m down the road and called my roadside rescue service (and my boss, as I was on the way to work at the time). It couldn't be repaired because the overheating had also warped the engine out of shape. The car was about 16 years old. Interestingly, it was a Rover Metro and this happened the same week that Rover went bust.

As long as there's water in the radiator, the car won't overheat or do the above, but if it's leaking then you'll have to keep stopping to fill it up and keep a close eye on the engine thermometor/overheating warning light. When it empties it will start to overheat very quickly. There are various other problems that can be caused by an overheated engine, not just blowing a head gasket. The engine could catch fire.

If your story calls for the car to go a certain distance then break down spectacularly, then this IMO is a perfect explanation, because that's exactly what happened to my car. Went half way to work just fine (30 min drive) then rather spectacularly blew its head gasket. It was a cold morning, so the steam pouring out of it was very visible. Clouds and clouds of it. It probably looked quite comical to other drivers.

ironmikezero said:

One thing confuses me . . . How do you crack the radiator from the rear?

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I was wondering this, too. How about a fuel leak from a damaged gas tank?

caw