I shampooed the carpet of my car with glycol today.
This story starts with my nearly new 2000 Magna wagon with only 325000kms on the clock starting to blow steam out of the the overflow bottle. I didn’t think this was too much of a problem as a piece of the radiator cap had broken off and started circulating the cooling system of the car (I figured a piece of the cooling system being in the coolant was a good thing?). I left this problem for a couple of weeks but because I had to occasionally top up the overflow bottle I though a new radiator cap would be a good fix. After fitting the new cap, I drove to work and I still saw steam coming out from under the bonnet (as a Magna owner, you quickly learn the difference between steam from a hot motor and smoke from the engine being on fire) and after a quick look found that a heater hose was leaking. I checked the coolant level once the engine cooled down and it was fine to make it home. By the time I got nearly home the steam was pouring out and I was feathering the ever so reliable chariot,thankful to see a stream of coolant spurting up out of the bonnet (meaning I hadn’t cooked the engine). I sprayed the block down with the garden hose then cut the end off the offending heater hose. As with most new cars there was so little space that re-attaching it was like try squeeze a pimple on an elephants bum while its sitting on your arm. I then topped up the radiator with 5 litres of new coolant but was not full so I put another 5L of distilled water but still not full and no dripping water so another 5L went in. I then had another look under the car to see if anything was dripping out from the engine bay which there wasn’t, but there was something dripping further back down the car- this is when I had a bad sinking feeling. I opened the passenger door and sure enough there was the floor mat floating in a pool of green coolant. I am not sure that Mitsubishi recommends that sort of deep clean for the carpets. The plastic barb sticking through the firewall had snapped off from the heater core and emptied everything from the cooling system into the interior. So this weekend I am stripping out the console and dash of the car to replace the heater and the seats and carpet to remove the glycol.
