"expanding hoses" sounds like someone has been doing some heavy duty shovel work.
Where can coolant go?
1. It can leak, while driving or while parked, or both. Fill the reservoir and put some newspaper under the engine. Look for wet spots the next day. Start the car and let it idle for half an hour (to come up to running temp) and check the newspaper again.
2. It can get into the combustion chamber through a weak head gasket. Unlikely, expensive, but not impossible as we don't know anything about the supposedly limited miles you put on the car. In days gone by, the test for this would be to remove all the spark plugs. If one plug is MUCH cleaner than the others, that's a pointer to which cylinder is receiving the leakage.
3. If it's being burned, it will go out the tailpipe as steam. Hold a bit of tissue paper a few inches off the tail pipe (not so close you burn your hand). There can be "some" moisture in the exhaust, but it should be "normal" and I don't know how to reliably convey how much is normal.
4. Check your coolant level more often and don't fill it above the proper fill level. A pal was concerned about his X5 constantly needing coolant, but he was overfilling it and as soon as the engine came up to temp and the coolant expanded, it was simply distributed on the street as was proper. Don't overfill.
Charlie
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to add value to these threads, either by pictures or by descriptions, so the next person with the same or similar problem stands on your shoulders.
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