Coolant Leak (Geyser?). Common points of failure?

[SpiffWilkie]

I have a 2004 5 speed. The head, water pump, timing belt, and all that's involved in that were replaced about 1000 miles ago.
On my way home last night, I was stopped at a light, and for whatever reason I thought, "squealing the tires would be fun!" It was just me by my lonesome with no traffic. So I revved up a bit, got a nice satisfying squeal, and went on my way. I then noticed some billowing "smoke" behind me. I chalked it up to exhaust on a cold night. I got to the next light (about 2 blocks from my house), and the "smoke" then appeared to be coming from under the hood. Yay. I drove the two blocks home, smelling coolant along the way.
I popped the hood and sure enough, there was coolant covering the engine compartment and the reservoir was bone dry.
So, my question is, given that this happened right after I burned a bit of rubber (nothing too extreme, mind you, just 1 or 2 seconds of screeching tires), and it was pretty catastrophic in that it emptied the majority of the coolant, is there a common failure point in these cars? I couldn't see any obvious hose damage (but it was dark and cold, so I didn't give it a thorough checking out), but it looked like it could be coming from the left side of the engine (my left), where it leaked onto the belt which then tossed it about.

[avguy]

If you still have the factory plastic thermostat, that's a likely suspect. The replacement will be a metal one. Hopefully just a coincidence that it happened while you were burning rubber.

[SpiffWilkie]

If you still have the factory plastic thermostat, that's a likely suspect. The replacement will be a metal one. Hopefully just a coincidence that it happened while you were burning rubber.

Thanks, I will check that. I do still have the factory one.

[Daox]

I'm pretty sure you can't get a new plastic one, but just in case make sure the new one is made of aluminum. I think in 2007 they redesigned it so it didn't fail.

[SpiffWilkie]

Thanks for the help, guys. Here's what happened when I gave a little tug on the thermostat housing

[avguy]

Glad you found it and hopefully the engine didn't overheat much as a result of the coolant loss. These stupid things typically fracture at joint, just like in your pic. But because of the 2 piece construction, the lip can hide whatever cracking is happening. In my case there wasn't a drop of coolant on the garage floor - no visual indication of anything wrong. Fortunately I check the fluid levels usually weekly, and doing so made it obvious that I was losing coolant. It took a fair amount of time to find out that the thermostat was leaking - newspaper underneath after shutting it off finally solved the crime. So, in my case the amount of coolant being lost was being heated and evaporated off before it could show up under the car. I felt fortunate to find this before it caused a real big problem. I think this plastic thermostat is right up there with the notorious timing belt problem. I suspect that more than a few engines get badly overheated because of this, and think that anyone still having the plastic thermo would be wise to change it out before it has a chance to take a big bite out of your wallet.

[SpiffWilkie]

The engine was fine. I was probably about 1/3 of a mile from home when it happened, thankfully. I don't carry a cell phone and it was cold last night. Glad I didn't have to hike home. I agree, that seems like a really crappy design, the metal one was much better (and the thermostat is user accessible now).
I got burned by the timing belt as well. Initially I thought that the leak was due to something I had messed something up when replacing the head. It's nice to finally fix something that didn't require me to dismantle anything.