Coolant leak e46 328ci

[ghostcoast]

IMG_6620.jpgHello I am new here, new to bmw’s, new to taken care of cars myself but I want to learn.
Couple weeks ago my upper radiator hose started leaking so I swapped it. Now every couple days my coolant light is turning on and my reservoir is drying out but I’m never finding puddles or drips UNTIL yesterday I finally found an area dripping coolant however I am really new to car maintenance so I am not sure what I am looking at so I have pictures provided. It is left middle of of my engine if facing the engine bay.

[White94RX]

Unless you can actually see where the coolant is dripping from, the only way you're going to find it is with a pressure tester. You'd likely be better off finding an independent shop that specializes in BMW and see what they recommend. Keep in mind, there's no such thing as a cheap BMW, no matter how much or how little you paid for it.

[Breeze1]

Given that you've just started maintaining cars by yourself, I'm going to bet on the fact that you didn't bleed the cooling system (no offense, it happened to most of us I guess) after replacing the hose and that the coolant light is due to air circulating where the sensor is, instead of coolant. If you didn't refill between each time the coolant light came on that's practically a given and you should watch a tutorial on how to bleed the system on youtube and act accordingly.
If you did, I'm going to assume that your coolant system is aging and that replacing that hose somehow moved the issue to another weak point.
An air pocket could also cause an over pressurization of the system, causing the leak.

[jclausen]

Clearly you have a leak don't fool around with the coolant system, soon enough the thing will over heat and you engine will be toast, get it figured out now

[ghostcoast]

Clearly you have a leak don't fool around with the coolant system, soon enough the thing will over heat and you engine will be toast, get it figured out now

thank you for the insight

[parkerbot]

I recently had the similar issue. I was working under the hood and managed to crack the plastic connector on my upper radiator hose. So I called around a found Advanced Auto had a hose in stock. Replaced it and thought all was good. Until 2 weeks later I my low coolant light came on. I investigated under the hood and noticed a bit of coolant on top of my expansion tank. Since I hadn't done a full coolant part refresh I assumed it was possibly the cap and or expansion tank (tank is known to develop hairline cracks over time) so I replaced both and coolant thinking all was good. It wasn't...coolant light came on again after a few weeks. I investigated and saw coolant in the same location on top of my expansion tank. Now I'm thinking the hose was defective. Luckily Advanced Auto replaced the defective hose at no cost and I refilled coolant and was on my way. Several months go by and my coolant light comes on again and I find coolant ontop of the expansion tank again. The hose that Advanced Auto carried was a Carquest upper radiator hose. I started to think maybe their plastic connectors were not well designed and were probably not making a good seal. So I went onto FCPEURO and ordered an OEM hose and installed it. Since then I've been going for ~6 months with no leaks or loss of coolant.

Morale of the story, if you didn't replace the leaky hose with a good OEM one I would recommend doing so.

[ghostcoast]

waterpump was shot for the 3rd time since i bought it last october so that was the issue as well as the thermostat lol. changed everything myself and its all good to go. I can sleep easy at night. thank you everyone for the input!