mine is doing the same thing? if you find out anything pleeeeaassse post it here. and I will do the same
Well what I was dreading, did in fact happened. The top hose had blew out, after leaving the car wash, a big cloud of steam coming from under the hood. I was able to get home without too much overheating.
I had to change the hose and replace the 3.5 gals of coolant. You do not have to remove the fan nor the fan shroud to do this because YOU WILL NEED 2 special tools that amount to over $100 .
I removed the engine cowling under the car; 13 10mm screws and you can clearly access the portion of the hose that connects to the transmission cooler. The other three points that must be disconnected is the big hose from the radiator and from the engine block. One more small hose attached to this octopus of hose is the alternator cooling hose.
Yes the alternator is cooled by the cooling system. The hoses are equipped with clips that slide up and down to install and uninstall the hoses. Make sure that they are correctly slide in so that you don't loose any fluid.
Before removing the hose, you need to remove the plenum cover and the air vent duct in front of the air intake of the plenum by unscrewing the jubilee clips with a blade screwdriver.
CAREFULLY move out of the way the duct to the side and back out of the way so that you can disconnect the alternator cooling hose. There are 2 small hoses attached to the air duct and they are a pain to remove without braking the clip, I left the alone not to break them just move the duct out of the way carefully. I used a small bungee cord to keep the iar duct out of my way.
Attach all hose ends to the respective receptacles and refill with coolant (BMW Blue, I used Pentafrost NF works fine but must diluted 50/50 with distilled water) Bleed the system when the engine cools down top with coolant.
Ok Clevergirl I hope this helps you out.
Regards
Lou, II
PS
Make sure that when the hose is installed that cable ties are replaced in the same locations as they were originally tied because the last thing you want is the viscous fan catching the hose and then you will have a bigger mess.