Excessive coolant dripping down from lower water pipe attached to oil cooler....?

[Lord Khan]

At first glance, I thought the coolant was leaking from the rubber hose fitting that hooks the lower water pipe to the oil cooler, but when I looked again, I noticed coolant pooling up on the bolt that holds the water pipe to the oil pan. My question is, is it possible for my water pipe to have gotten damaged some sort of way to leak coolant? I'm going to go home today and try to take the heat shield off to see if I can better pinpoint the leak, but another question I have is how close to the water pump is this pipe. I'm trying to determine if the coolant is leaking from there, and dripping onto the water pipe as well. But the way the coolant seems to be concentrated down the water pipe really makes it look as if this pipe is leaking from somewhere under the exhaust manifold. Any help would be much appreciated.

P.S. - My car has been smelling like coolant for a while, but I didn't see any puddles under my car til this morning, and the smell of coolant got a lot worse. No white smoke or anything, so I know its an external leak.

 

[Lord Khan]

Looked under car last night and found that it WAS that steel waterline. The pipe has been resting against one of the bolts on the O2 housing, and the bolt eventually chewed through the pipe! When I did a search on this subject, I noticed that a few other people had run into this issue. I've already ordered a new water line from the dealership ($43 for that little water line), but I don't want the same thing to happen over time with the new line. This seems like a bad design on Mitsubishi's part. Anyone know a way to mount this line so it doesn't rub against that bolt.

 

[alIan]

i would either tap it out of the way a little bit with a small hammer (like 2-3 mm, dont break the thing), or put something in between the bolt and it...

 

[Lord Khan]

I'm going to try to put something aroud the pipe to avoid further damage, and maybe try to bend it a little so it doesn't touch at all. Thanks for the help.