I own a Honda Crv 2000. I took the car for an oil change at a local oil change shop. They overfilled the oil. I went to the city and came back, and next day the underside of the car was oily and leaky. The car was dripping oil. I immediately siphoned out 300ml of extra oil from the car. After that the leaking stopped and it does not leak/drip anymore. At the same time I saw coolant dripping from the lower radiator hose (where it meets the radiator). I noticed when the fans come on it start dripping. But as of today the coolant dripping has stopped. I am thinking of changing the hose.
By all means change the hose. If a new hose drips it is ususally not tight, but at 13 years, just replace it.
Rubber absorbs oil, it swells, gets soft and eventually tears around the clamp causing leaks. If you don’t replace it ASAP, you could be looking at an overheated engine in the very near future and then very expensive engine repairs.
If you drive it, keep one eye glued to the temperature gauge, but in this weather, you need both eyes on the road, so guess what I’m trying to tell you here.
If you replace the hose, don’t be surprised if you continue to see a drop from there. There’s a whole lot of radiator up above that hose, so make sure you do a thorough inspection while there’s still coolant in there. I’m not saying that you will find a radiator leak or shouldn’t replace the hose if you do find a radiator leak. I’m just saying that you don’t want the annoyance of just replacing the hose and then finding out it isn’t what was leaking.
cig makes a good point, the radiator has a rubber gasket between each of the plastic tanks and the aluminum core and one of them could be leaking right around the area of the hose and it might look like the hose is leaking.
I wouldn’t change the hose until I knew exactly where the drip was coming from. I’d use a cloth rag to clean off all the leaking coolant I could, then watch over the next hour or days where the drip is coming from. It could be coming from up near the top of the radiator as mentioned above, and just decanting on the lower hose. I think there are relatively inexpensive dye kits available at auto parts store that make this job easier, you put in some florescent dye into the radiator, then at night you use a UV flashlight (that comes with the kit) to see where the leak is coming from.
I had a high school friend years ago, he had an oil leak in his car, couldn’t figure out from where, so he cleaned off his engine with degreaser, wiped it best he could with cloth rags , then he sprayed the engine with some kind of athlete’s foot powder from a spray can. Talcum powder or something. It coated the engine with a white powder, so he could later see the oil path as it dripped from whatever was leaking. I think in that case it was the valve cover gasket. That car of his had the hugest back seat area of any car of I’ve ever seen. It was so big, like being in a living room back there. I think that car was a De Soto or something like that. Big black car. Older than the hills.
300 ml of extra oil? hmmm … usually that wouldn’t cause the problems you noted, but maybe your car is extra sensitive to overfills. As has been mentioned in this forum before, it’s a good commonsense idea to check the oil level on the dipstick yourself before departing the shop after an oil change, then again when you get home, and once again the next morning. Combine all that with a look-see under the engine to check for any oil leaking. It’s a pain, after all you are paying good money for the service, but posting history here tells us mistakes are not that unusual on what should be simple oil and filter changes. It’s in your own self interest to double check.
Thanks you guys I took your advice and took the lower plastic cover off from the bottom of the car. Then I let the car run and put my head under the car and noticed that the radiator is leaking!! Thanks for all your help.