from the front end of my car, what would you say the stuff was?
(I’m not, so no immedaite urgent advice needed; I’m just wondering what the stuff is. It’s really a garish, disgusting green.)
Coolant.
Antifreeze. Either you’ve got a hole in your radiator, in the radiator hoses, or (less likely) a cracked block.
Antifreeze, I’m guessing.
Incidentally, if your car really is leaking a lot of it, you’ll definitely want to keep an eye on the coolant level. This time of year, you can top it off with plain water, but before winter comes you’ll need to fix the leak and keep the proper water/antifreeze ratio in there.
Anti-freeze, or more precisely, coolant. It is a mixture of water, and the anti-freeze for sale at the store.
You could use straight water if you had to, but it would of course freeze up when the car is parked. Also, the anti-freeze lowers the boiling point of the mixture, which obviously makes it a better coolant. And the anti-freeze helps prevent the parts of the car’s cooling system from corroding.
So anyway, the coolant mixture is pumped through the engine, where it gets hot. Then it’s pumped to the radiator in front of the car, where it gets cooled off by the car’s motion and the fan. And then it goes back into the engine to start over again.
There’s also a miniature radiator (called the heater core) and a small fan inside the car; that’s your heater.
Anyway, if you run out of coolant, the engine’s going to overheat pretty soon, and serious damage can result.
If your car is leaking coolant, you’ll still at least be able to drive long enough to get off the road. Just watch the dashboard temperature gauge carefully while doing so.
Also, anti-freeze is poisonous and sweet; it’s said to be attractive to dogs and cats. If you’re stuck at the roadside and don’t have any means to rinse it away, kicking some dirt over it would be better than nothing.
I’ve learned that, the guage, while technically giving the correct temp it’s receiving, isn’t always telling you what you need to know. If you have NO coolant, the guage will a normal (or low) temp, since there’s no coolant going by to heat up the sensor. This is a problem if for some reason you dumped all your coolant without noticing, (ie blew your radiator while driving). The thing that will tip you off is that you can’t get heat into the cab, the heater just blows warm/cool air.
Joey has a great point. I just didn’t want to make my post any longer than it already was. If you have no heat, either there’s no coolant in the car, or you have coolant but it’s not flowing—the water pump belt may have broken.
I thought the temp gauge was reading oil temp, not coolant temp. It did in all the cars I drove.
In slightly over 30 years of working on cars I have never seen a car where the standard temp gauge reads oil temp. I have worked on some (and owned some) sports cars where there was an oil temp gauge in addition to the coolant temp gauge, but it was always labled “Oil temp”
So I’m gonna have to ask for a cite. 
Oh and Chris Luongo Antifreeze (or coolant, if you prefer) rasises the boiling point of water which is why it is used in the summer. Lowering the boiling point wouldn’t help.
Starting to get off track here, but that could also be a stuck (closed) thermostat.
Possibly I’m barking up the wrong tree here, but how old is your car?
The reason I ask is that if it’s more than a few years old the coolant is likely to be a dirty rusty colour.
If it’s a really bright, garish luminous colour it could also be hydraulic fluid.
Although the large quantity and the fact that it is coming from the front of the car would suggest coolant, it might be worth checking that it’s not coming from the brake/clutch cylinder, transmission (if automatic) or the power steering system just to be on the safe side…
Of course, the car could be 30 years old, but just serviced on Friday, complete with a radiator flush and refill. In which case it’s just overflow.
If it is anti-freeze (coolant), be sure to clean it up from your drive or wherever it is as soon as possible. Anti-freeze is a dog’s (or really any kind of animal’s) death warrant. Supposedly it is “sweet” smelling to a dog, and they are lured by it. It’s a horrible way for an animal to die, FYI.
Just a PSA from yours truly. Sorry for the hi-jack…just had to butt in remembering a friend whose dog was killed in this manner.
It’s not “supposedly” sweet; it is sweet. When Airman fixed GingeroftheNorth’s radiator a few weeks ago, he got to find out just how sweet it really is. Fortunately, he didn’t ingest a lot of it, or y’all would have been hearing about his funeral).
Robin
Thanks for the info! I mainly put “supposedly” as I had never personally tasted it so wasn’t sure if it was actually sweet, or just that dogs thought it was.
And glad to hear Airman wasn’t hurt!
Could be water pump too.
You should clean the stuff up cause canines like to drink it & it’s quite toxic to them.
You’ve driven some special cars then my friend!
Usually only sports cars or work trucks have a seperate oil temperature guage, and even then its pretty rare.
Your temp sensor is usually just behind your upper rad hose, and measuring coolant temp.
Most cars have a red light for oil pressure and a warning light or gauge for water temperature.
Not just animals. Your average three-year-old human isn’t smart enough not to lick the driveway, either.