It has been in the mid-80s here the past few days and I am seeing the high temperature light start to flash. The air conditioner will stop cooling the air, too. I checked the coolant tank behind the radiator and it seemed like it was empty, so i filled it up. The next day the same thing happened. In two days, I have gone through a whole jug of coolant. I don't see any signs of leaking on the ground. Ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

take it to the dealership, should all be covered by warranty

 

the only other place it could be going is into the cylinders if you have a bad head gasket... does your car have any amount of white smoke coming out of the exhaust? do you smell antifreeze in the exhaust? i have never seen the high temp light come on in my car, even when it has been in the 90s.

 

yeah, take it to the dealership, something is wrong,should be covered under warranty.

and do it ASAP btw cuz any resulting damage they might not cover because you were driving the car knowing there was a cooling problem thus drastically shortening the life of the engine.

 

just an update, i took it to the dealership this morning. There is a hole in the radiator which is leaking the fluid. $453.00 for a new radiator and another $300 for labor and i'll be in ship shape. in the meantime, they gave me a rental Sienna with 4 miles on it. It is pretty nice.

 

oh and it isn't covered under warranty because I didn't purchase the "extended" warranty. Whatever the hell that is.

 

I don't think the extended warranty would cover that either though. Usually holes on radiators are caused by debris or animals (like ones that are hit while driving).

 

Wait... they're not going to cover that? That's insane. How long have you had the car? Have you gone over the miles on the regular warranty? That really sucks.

 

Chels, if a rock gets thrown into your radiator, no warranty is going to cover it. If anything, your insurance might cover it.

 

True true.

 

the car is a year and a half old with 36K miles

 

so the hole in the radiator because of a rock theory was busted wen i saw the radiator. it was leaking coolant from the back of the radiator about mid-way down on the right hand side. the fan covers this area so it would be very difficult for something to puncture it. it could have been a defective product. just a heads up for the rest of you.

 

So, does 36,000 miles mean just under or just over? If you were under 36k and it was a defect, it should have been covered. If you were 36,001+ miles, then the warranty is over and it is your cost (as much as that sucks).

 

Toyota doesn't call it a defect because it hasn't been reported by a lot of people, but that doesn't mean that there won't be a lot of them in the future. The tech I talked to said the radiators were pretty cheap quality. I have 36246 miles on the xD and it was over the 36000 warranty. Unfortunately this isn't even something that insurance would cover. Sux all around.

 

If it was caused by damage from impact of some road object, then you could file a claim most likely, but this seems to be some sort of workmanship or material defect, which is not covered by insurance policies. Being out of warranty by just that much is way sucky as well... I think it might be worth a quick call to Scion Corporate to see if they can pull any strings for you.