Hi all....

I'm having a weird coolant problem with my Mom's Elantra. I believe
it's a 96 model.

Over the past few weeks she had noticed the car overheating. I didn't
have much time
to work on the car so I just kept filling up the reservoir and the rad
with fresh liquid
until such time that I was able to spend some time on the problem.

So I got into it last night. I briefly pressurized the system to about
30 PSI (probably too
much) and found a small leak on the output of the thermostat.
I fixed it by replacing the original hose clamp with a garden hose
clamp, thightened it
and the leak was gone.

So I topped up the rad and the reservoir with water and off I went for
a test drive.
The outside temp was about 70 degs at the time.
Within about 5 minutes of driving, the temperature gauge sat in the
center of the
scale.
Another 5 or 10 minutes went by and both rad fans came on (stopped to
doublecheck), which
I found weird since my Saturn doesn't do that unless it's hot out and
I'm stuck in stop and
go traffic.
The needle sat pretty much in the center except for a couple of
occassions when it went
a little higher, but then dropped again.

When I got home, I let the car cool down and noticed it was missing
about a quart of water.
Oil appears to be fine, there is no coolant smell in the car when
running the heater, and
the car doesn't blow white smoke.

Pressurized the system again but could not find any evidence of a leak
anywhere.

One thing that I have noticed (not sure if related to the above
problem) was that the
engine ran a little rough when stopped. The SES light in on constantly
except for a couple
of times it would flash when stopped at a light. Again, I'm not sure
if it is related.

I will be getting a scan tool to check for errors in the next couple
of nights but until then
I'm confused as to where the coolant might have gone.

Any ideas I should look into would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Alex