Hi folks. I'm the proud owner of a 2003 T&C for the last 3 years. I have an interesting predicament I hope I can get resolved. Keep in mind that I've been taking my T&C to Sears everything 3k miles for regular maintenance, etc. so I had gotten lazy about checking things myself.

My heater had been acting up shifting between blowing nice warm air and cool air at irregular intervals. The engine temperature always stayed stead in the center. I had planned to get this looked at eventually.

Yesterday the check oil light had come up temporarily. I had planned on doing my annual maintenance run to Sears this weekend so I thought it could wait a couple days with monitoring. This morning on the way to the office the engine temperature shot up almost to H (was in the red). So I pulled into a gas station before putting any strain on the engine. Checked the oil and nothing was on the stick so I dumped a couple quarts in and everything seemed fine.

Took it back home and decided to check out the coolant when I got there. Empty. Nothing! And I'm not certain for how long either. So I grabbed a couple gallons of coolant from the garage (both were about half full). Put the first one in and decided it needed more. Everything was "LOOKED" fine until I added the second. That's when I noticed a rather large puddle of coolant on the ground at my feet (yes I was VERY careful not to spill). Stepped back and looked under from the front of the van. It looked like it was dripping from just behind the radiator somewhere.

At this point I took it to a shop to have assessed but gut was telling me water pump (had a similar experience with a Ford Taurus about eight years ago). After about a day at the shop the mechanic calls to tell me I was right on about the waterpump. Apparently it had been shot for a few months now. But he says it wasn't the reason for the (as he put it) catastrophic failure. He claims the culprit was the infamous tube connecting the front and rear heater cores. The shop did give me the option of the "proper fix" (which included labor, a flush, an oil change, more antifreeze, the waterpump, and the official replacement part totaling about 1100 bucks) or the "hack" (all the same stuff except bypassing the expensive official part with a heater hose which brought the price down into the neighborhood of 600 bucks).

I did some research about all this stuff and called him back. I needed to know the location of these parts. Front heater core behind the engine near the dash, rear core somewhere in the back on the underside, magic aluminum tube running the length of the undercarriage between the two, and the waterpump towards the front of the engine on the passenger side. He says the erosion in the hose is just behind engine.

So that leaves me wondering... Given all that, why on earth was the fluid pouring from someplace just behind the radiator towards the center this morning? I didn't see anything coming off the area where the pump is located or anything dripping or pouring out from anywhere else under the vehicle. They weren't sure about that either when I posed the question.

These guys seem to be pretty reputable and I had pretty good vibes when I dropped off the van this morning. I've had bad experiences with mechanics in the past and I so want to trust them. I don't doubt these parts need replacing. But I also don't want to have to come back or have to spend even more money because they're just throwing parts at this thing and missed something in the process.

Any feedback would be super great and appreciated.