Coolant level dropping...

Maelstrom · Jul 7, 2025

Hi Hive Mind.

We've got a 2018 Beach currently on almost 70m miles. It's always driven well and mostly behaved, always serviced and still got the extended warranty.

Had a big service in January, but the coolant warning light came on 21st May (69,132 miles). Got to admit, the coolant's never been an issue. Never had a warning light and never had to top up. I asked at the dealer when I went to pick up a bottle of coolant if it was normally checked with a service and they said no. The level was about an inch below the minimum so I topped it up with half a litre and presumed that was that, as I wouldn't know when it was last filled. Light came on again 20th June, topped up again, crossed my fingers. Just had a look today (69,687 miles) and I don't have a light yet, but it's about an inch below the minimum again.

Should I book it in, or buy another litre? I'm not seeing any other symptoms. Maybe the cooling fan is more obvious at the end of shorter journeys than it used to be.

It's done about 50k in the last 4 years. Long and regular short journeys. This seems to have coincided with me not using it for the shorter journeys as we've just got a new car.

Jon A · Jul 7, 2025

Same symptom for me when my EGR cooler was failing. There are several ways they can fail - one way is the thin metal barriers inside the cooler matrix breaks down and your coolant ends up mixed with the exhaust gas and then enters the cylinder where it gets burnt and ejected.

Might be something else , but you're at about the right mileage for EGR failure , which I regard as a consumable. Mine is a 2019 and EGR failed at 45k

Maelstrom · Jul 7, 2025

I did have the split EGR pipe a year ago. I'll book it in

Resfeber · Jul 10, 2025

Jon A said:
Same symptom for me when my EGR cooler was failing. There are several ways they can fail - one way is the thin metal barriers inside the cooler matrix breaks down and your coolant ends up mixed with the exhaust gas and then enters the cylinder where it gets burnt and ejected.

Might be something else , but you're at about the right mileage for EGR failure , which I regard as a consumable. Mine is a 2019 and EGR failed at 45k

And for me at 62,000 (previous T6 Ocean 150bhp dsg. Never had to top up and then coolant light with an empty reservoir.
Had to keep topping up for a month until I could get to dealers for all in warranty repair.
Consumed about 100ml per 100 miles until repair with new EGR cooler

jimmywease · Saturday at 8:22 AM

Resfeber said:
And for me at 62,000 (previous T6 Ocean 150bhp dsg. Never had to top up and then coolant light with an empty reservoir.
Had to keep topping up for a month until I could get to dealers for all in warranty repair.
Consumed about 100ml per 100 miles until repair with new EGR cooler

Exactly the same for me around 85,000 miles. 2017 T6 150 DSG Beach. Just had EGR replaced for £1200 at indie.

Fingers crossed it was the correct and only cause of the coolant loss…

Resfeber · Saturday at 9:23 AM

jimmywease said:
Exactly the same for me around 85,000 miles. 2017 T6 150 DSG Beach. Just had EGR replaced for £1200 at indie.

Fingers crossed it was the correct and only cause of the coolant loss…

Don’t be surprised if the level in the reservoir varies for the first week or so.
Don’t think many dealers use vacuum filling so often quite a bit of air is trapped and needs to find its way to the reservoir.
I had 2 or 3 decent top ups before it settled after the egr cooler replacement at main dealer and was a bit concerned as to whether the egr cooler was the only source of water consumption until things settled.