Hello, I am new to the forums! And I love my 93 Dodge Dakota!
Unfortunatly, I discovered an antifreeze leak the other day. I do not know where it is coming from yet. I looked underneath the truck and couldn't find where the leak is located. It drips in the middle of the truck off the oil pan. I checked the radiator hoses top and bottom only to find that they were dry. Any ideas on what might be the cause of this? Water pump? Any advice or comments would be appreciated greatly! Thanks for your time.

 

If all of your hoses are fine then I would say its likely your waterpump.
See if you can get your hand under it when the truck is off obviously and feel around for any coolant. It could also be the gasket by your thermostat housing. Check the large hose that comes off the top of your radiator. It goes straight to your Thermostat housing. It should be easily visible if it is leaking there.

 

Also you can grab the top radiator house while the engine is running and if you can feel a good amount of fluid flowing through there then your water pump itself is probably okay.

You gotta find the source spot of the leak though.

 

If your truck has the 5.2 make sure to check the heater bypass tube where it goes into the water pump. The tube has a oring on it that make the seal and they are known to leak. If it is that tube then replace the whole tube.

 

Does it have that same bypass on a 3.9l?

 

it could also be the radiator itself leaking...although it'd be a pretty large leak..i had to replace the radiator in mine because it leaked out all of its antifreeze

 

Yes the 3.9 also has the heater bypass tube

 

just had the same problem on my 5.2, it ended up being the timing chain cover, which is right behind the water pump. It isnt a hard fix to do. Check to see if you can see if it is leaking, it sits right over the oil pan so that would be a good area to look at

 

I would just redo all of the hoses, thermostat, water pump, and fan clutch. If you buy the stuff on ebay it isnt that much, and its not hard to do at all.

 

I had to replace the water pump on my truck a couple months ago cause it was leaking out of the wheep hole in the back. Its very hard to see. I wad able to see it from the passenger side whith a flashlight looking through a small hole around the alternator. When i replaced the water pump i cleaned the whole front of the motor where grease and dirt had built up. After getting everything back together i had a squeak so i ended up replacing the idler pulley and tensioner pulley. It help with the squeak but after a couple days it got really bad again. I searched for a few days to find out what was causing the squeak and thought i had pinned it down to the fan clutch. So i bought a new fan clutch from napa and it was like $70 compared to $250 from dealer. I put the new fan clutch on and what do you know i still had a bad squeak and now had turned into a squeal. It ended up being the fan belt the whole time. I guess it got soaked with antifreeze and i even tried to use 3 cans of brake cleaner but it still made abunch of noise. So if you end up replacing the water pump and have a squeal after then you know what to look for.