Losing Coolant (Externally)
So Friday night heading to dinner I noticed a smell of coolant coming from the engine bay and decided that though I wasn't low on coolant, I should definitely figure out where that smell was coming from. Saturday rolls around and I park the car in the garage at work, hour later there's a small puddle of DexCool on the ground just behind the motor. Well she didn't lose much coolant after that, just a bit while the system was pressurized. Promptly after work I snagged 4 gallons of distilled water to ensure I would make it to my friend's house so we could put it up on ramps and figure out where it was coming from.
I get it to his house and I can hear coolant hitting either the turbo or exhaust manifold. We pressurize the system with an air compressor and discover that there is coolant spraying onto the gasket between the turbo and exhaust manifold. Too dark to do anything so we pick it up the next day. I buy the banjo bolt gaskets and pull the turbo coolant return pipe off to discover this nice little gash in it:
Turns out the manifold gasket actually cut the pipe somehow, so I bent the gasket down flat so it wouldn't rub any more and tossed some QuikSteel onto the cut spot:
I spoke with a dealership before I pulled everything apart and they said the coolant pipe wouldn't be covered under the 100k mi powertrain warranty. So I elected to just patch and replace it myself. Ordered a new pipe from GMpartsdirect.com for $70shipped and will hopefully be putting that on next weekend.
TL;DR? Exhaust manifold to Turbo gasket cut turbo coolant return pipe, GM said no warranty on that part, bent the gasket, patched pipe myself and will be replacing with an OEM piece soon.
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Originally Posted by TTMR
