Just been motorway driving for about an hour at 80-90 mph, and got out to find the car smelling "hot" and some light smoke in the headlights (it was dark so could only see it in the lights beams). Couldn't tell what it was but am worried!! Isn't brakes or clutch as I wasn't using them! Oil looks OK but on checking I noticed the coolant bottle is almost empty. Temp guage reads as normal, though.

The coolant bottle is immediately behind the radiator on the right and just has a plastic cap and feeds into the rad cap (its a legacy not an impreza) and the liquid is right at the bottom. (The cap says "Refer to Owners manual" but being an import I don't have one). Is it an overflow bottle which should be low when the engine is hot and fills up when cold - or does that only happen with pressurised systems?

If it needs to be kept full then what with - presume a mix of water and antifreeze but the stuff in there looks very dark.

Still need to trace the source of the smoke/steam problem but don't have time to get it to a garage as I am taking it to France first thing on Monday!!!

 

That is just an over flow expansion tank on the Impreza.

Mine is normally empty..

The actual place I check mine is the cap on the top righthand front of the engine with Caution Hot written on it..

hope that helps

JGM

 

should be a max/min mark on the bottle. keep it at the max mark, you should be ok.