hi, i am just abit concerned about my cooling system. i replaced my coolant awhile ago ,about 400 miles. my car (95 wagon,standard) runs well, stable idle, temp gauge in middle, rad fans come on go off as expected, no obvious leaks, heater blows hot, all good. however the level in my header tank seems to settle at about 1cm from top and my top hose feels soft when car is at normal running temp. after stopping the car the the top hose gets harder as the coolant heats up/engine cools down. the expansion bottle is not loosing water ,the battery area is dry. if i top the coolant up to the top in the header tank after 100 miles or so the level is back down to 1cm below the cap. any ideas?

 

everything you have written sounds normal to me. the reason its 1cm from the top is cuase the cap is not very good at drawing in all the water sometimes. a new, good quality cap would fix this but after time as the cap wears again the gap will appear.
no need to replace the cap just yet imo.

 

thanks dj ,i will just keep an eye on things and stop worrying/looking for problems that might not be problems, the car is newish to me so still getting used to it.

 

Erm....why not spend the £10 on a new Genuine Subaru cap? Not really a large outlay compared to a re-build after a low coolant overheat....