My '99 Z24 is coming up on 120000 kms, and winter is coming, so I decided to get all the fluids topped off and/or changed. I'm not sure where I heard this but there is a fluid in which, if it is not changed will do damage to some internals of the engine. But I have to replace it with the exact same type of fluid.
I know its a little vague and I'm not even sure if I'm making this up or not.
Any help would be great.
Thousands of car owners all across the country have recently been hit with expensive engine repairs.
The cause? No is one is exactly sure.
But many mechanics blame General Motor's new anti-freeze, a coolant that has left many GM owners anything but cool.
Mary Ann Crabtree never expected engine trouble with her 1998 Buick, because it had only 55,000 miles on the odometer.
So she was stunned, during a routine oil change, when her mechanic discovered a blown engine gasket from what he said was coolant as thick as sludge!
"They told us the coolant had gummed up. We had never heard of the problem or anything," Crabtree said.
Mechanic Al Duebber opened her radiator cap to find something he's seeing all too frequently these days.
"This is what we run into," Duebber said.
Inside, what should have been bright orange antifreeze had gummy brown deposits in it.
"You can see this has almost an oily residue on it," Duebber said.
Mary Ann's car needed what's called an intake manifold gasket.
It's the plastic engine seal Al showed me here....that costs hundreds of dollars to replace.
"What happens is they fail right in the journal here. And it'll cause coolant to leak out and eventually into the internal components of the engine," Duebber said.
Several lawsuits now claim these gaskets are being eaten away by bad coolant in thousands of late model GM cars.
Duebber sees GM cars with coolant problems every week.
(use a search for Dexcool to learn more)
i have 166,000 kms on my car and never had a prob with sludge...
Ryan1
i had that prob so i drained it, fluched it, and filled with green stuff vs. that dexcool crap.. 40,000 miles later still workin fine!
Mike Jones..... Who? <a style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=24&k=hand%20puppet" onmouseover="window.status='hand puppet'; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;">hand puppet</a>.. play with it enough it will make you go crazy.
the problem with dexcool is that people forget to change it after 5 yrs, thats the limit, 5 yrs or 160k miles.
most problems happen before 5yrs of use from my experience with dexcool on my cars and my moms.
Mike Jones..... Who? <a style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=24&k=hand%20puppet" onmouseover="window.status='hand puppet'; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;">hand puppet</a>.. play with it enough it will make you go crazy.
i don't know what to say, i've got dex cool in my car and there was no sludge and i just changed it as my car hit 5 years this year.
My G/f has an 03 sunfire and she's had no issues either ans she has almost 50,000km on it.
My friends got an 04 Alero and has no dex cool prob.
My other friend has a 02 Grand am with 75,000 kms and has no sludge or issues.
Maybe certain types of systems can cause sludge becasue of a blockage or something. I read somewhere a while back that it wasn't the dexcool that caused the sludge but a poorly designed cooling system that didn't circulate the dex cool well.
Ryan1
Old Mary Jane Rotten Crotch might have mixed dex cool with regular antifreeze. I know that they are not compatible, someone might have topped off her liquids at an oil change place and put the wrong one in.
LoL "Old Mary Jane Rotten Crotch" got owned.
