Based on the location of the coolant, I think you should be looking at the thermostat housing area. If you look closely at the pic you can follow the trail of dried up coolant leading back in that direction. Adding a cooling system pressure tester to the toolkit is money well spent IMO. Especially with cars as old as ours.

 

What are you signs of losing coolant? Is your coolant overflow dropping over time? Water evaporates quick on a hot motor so if you're pushing something external a coolant pressure tester rented from local auto store is your best bet to test.

 

That's what I'm thinking, and obviously with that bizarre pool of fluid that can't really be anything other than coolant. It's tough to tell though. Hoping it's something in the thermostat housing area, but hard to tell.

at the least, really really hoping it's not something internal.

yea noticing drops in the overflow tank, i draw a line where I like to keep it (because it expands quite a bit when racing) so I monitor quite closely.

so with the tester, from what I saw on amazon u attach it to the cap and put pressure into the system, and see where it leaks?

 

Yeah, you pressurize the system with that. Shows you two things, if its leaking it will drop over time. If it leaks external you should be able to see it eventually hit the ground and trace it up from there.

If it drops pressure but no external leaking then pull the plugs and look in the combustion chamber to see if its wet.

 

Also check your coolant lines going to the turbo. I used to have tons of issues with those leaking.

 

first thing id do is clean it up and see if it comes back. As biggie said thermostat or heater core pipework would be first place to inspect. Looks so minor though i wouldnt worry about it

 

check the underside of the wire harness, see if its dribbling from TB coolant lines. you relocated the batt so the wires may slope towards that location now. or maybe these were already in the wire looms

 

is it because of the cost or do you just want a stronger rear bearing. Last time I changed the rear bearings I managed to get just the bearing in the housing and press in the original hub... it did not cost a ton..

 

thanks, will check all of those spots. may have shop do it since it'd be easier for them than me but definitely losing somewhere - i took an hour long drive yesterday with a number of pulls and the coolant level on overflow was low this morning by about 2mm on the overflow, while the block was still 2 degrees warmer (67 vs 65) in the place i always measure for temp.

 

There are plenty of affordable bearings, I'm suggesting this as an option for a stronger bearing as there are guys who are failing them on a regular basis.

 

The question then would be - is 22% really enough. In terms of "strength" shouldn't it be at least 200% to be worth it?

 

200% doesn't exist without making everything else custom and twice the size. That means custom axles, custom bearings, custom uprights, custom hubs. You're looking at $10k + just to use a stronger bearing. We have certain packaging constraints if we don't want cost to skyrocket and those constraints limit how large of a bearing we can use.

The other thing to consider is that the 2 piece design will inherently suffer less failures due to design. With the factory housing if the housing flexes, the outer race of the bearing is flexing, which leads to bearing failure. With a 2 piece design, if the housing flexes (we're talking microns here) the bearing races don't flex as much because it's a cartridge assembly so the housing can flex separately from the bearing. So the goal here is a housing that flexes less combined with a bearing that is less affected by flex and is also rated for higher loads.

Edit: But to answer your question as to if 22% is enough. I'm trying to find what the load ratings are on the GTR bearing as well as a 991 GT3 bearing as those are often lauded as being able to handle extensive track abuse. I haven't found their exact specs yet but everything remotely close in size to the front lancer bearing is at most 5% higher rated so I'm not expecting the GTR or GT3 bearing to be much higher. So to answer your question, my guess (and hope) is that 22% will be enough of an increase to see a lower failure rate.

 

I dont understand why these guys are having regular bearing failures? Maybe need to diagnose the root cause of whats causing them to fail. Maybe something in how they are running their wheel alignment or the wheel offset and install or using wheel spacers or something?

Just seems weird plenty of us here have never had issues and we have some of the most extreme evos in the world.

 

Right? Would be funny if it was something stupid like they were bolting the wheels on without the axles installed and rolling it around.

 

I have 140kish miles and beat on my car. No bearing issues. Am I just lucky?