328 coolant problems

Just brought the car out of winter storage yesterday. Drove about 50 miles yesterday, parked the car in the garage, very happy. Everything seemed to be in order.

"Easy" problem first:

Go out to the garage today, there's a small puddle of coolant behind the front passenger side wheel. A little looking around and it seems the passenger side heater core is leaking. One of the hose clamps to it seemed a little loose, so I tightened it up and wiped up the coolant that leaked into the spare tire area. Then I went for a short drive since it's a nice day and I needed to put gas in the car anyway.

Drove until the coolant temp gauge read ~170, oil temp still on the low peg, pulled into the gas station... fresh coolant below the heater core. Guess I need a new one or this one repaired. Seems easy enough. Any pointer are appreciated.

Now the "big" problem...

When I shut off the engine at the gas station there was a big cloud of steam from the rear compartment passenger side and a puddle of coolant on the ground, looked like maybe 4 ounces or so spilled - that makes a fairly large puddle!

Put in 5 gallons of gas then weighed my options. Coolant and oil temp gauges were still low on the scales, and the gas station is less than 1/2 mile from my house. So I gently drove it back home. Pulled into the garage and a smaller cloud of steam and smaller puddle of coolant appeared in back. Now I'm moderately alarmed. No coolant dripping out of the overflow tube, it seems to be running off the top of the engine.

Wait for it to cool down, look around carefully. See coolant dripping from a burst hose under the intake plenum. Looks like the hose that runs from the water manifold to the expansion tank. But why would that hose burst, it was just replaced 350 miles and 5 months ago during the major service?

Look a little more closely, and it looks like the hose has been chewed! Pieces missing from it. Not like it split, but like a mouse or something ate it!

So after this long story, any tips for acessing that hose at the water manifold end without pulling the intake manifold off the engine? Like maybe having to remove the oil filter or something? And more importantly, is there anything else I should check that might have caused this problem? Car ran fine last year, I'm thinking that a mouse invaded my engine compartment and ate that hose. There's no other sign of rodent snacking under there. Seems they only like the part that's hardest to reach.

Thanks for any advice, jokes, or ridicule!

Jeff

 

Thanks for the info and encouragement guys!

The hose in question is the thin one (maybe 5/8"?) that runs from the water manifold under the intake plenum to the top inlet of the expansion tank. Ordered the replacment hose from Ricambi yesterday, got to chat with Dave for a while, very nice. $43 for the special grade Italian hose was about what I expected.

I looked at it again today and it does look like it will be a fairly straightforward job with some clever tool usage and a couple extra small hands. Guess I'll find out if my wife enjoys working on the Ferrari

carlrose, if you could e-mail me your article about replacing the coolant as well as the one about removing the heater cores, that would be superb. I sent you my contact info via PM. Thanks again!