I hear water rushing back and forth....but from where?
 

Hi guys,

I'm not sure if this is a problem or not. I also couldn't find it in the search for some reason.

Recently, I've been hearing a noise similar to that of water rushing back and forth. It does it when my car is slightly under load and usually after I warm up the car briefly.

Is this coolant sound? Or is the T-stat opening making this sound?

It just got me a bit paranoid. There were no changes in temps at all.

yes.

u are fine

Common sound, more common the colder it is outside. 100% no problem. You can get a baffle to remove the noise, but there is nothing wrong.

its air bubbles rushing through your heater core and it COULD be bad if there is too much. get it burped.

may as well top off your coolant. It fixed mine a while ago.

It's just your apex seals materializing from your catalytic converter, it's where they go when you shut your engine off.

That's why you don't want to rev it cold, the combustion chamber isn't sealed properly, and it could cause a huge engine bay fire.

I was paranoid too..




Turns out it was my lighter fluid.

Right on guys.

I figured that it was the coolant rushing through the heater core as my Miata did the same thing when the temperatures got a bit cooler.

I think I'm overdue to flush out my radiator anyways so looks like I'll be doing that over this weekend. Thanks for the quick replies!

Glad to see everything worked out. I had the same sound, for a different reason this summer. I wanted to add my experience in case anyone has the same issue.

I was getting this "water flowing" sound when I had the AC on, and eventually there was some water leaking into the passenger footwell. After a little investigation I figured it may be a clogged r blocked AC drain. Since I didn't know where the external end of the AC drain was I posted it up here.

https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-trouble-shooting-95/ac-drain-location-176868/

I used this to find the drain, and the problem has gone away totally.