“It’s a shame - vehicles in their fourth or fifth year with this awful, gooey mud attacking the top of the radiator cap and fouling up the radiator,” he said. A typical repair requires flushing the cooling system and in some cases taking the radiator apart. Mark Reynolds, a radiator repair shop owner in San Carlos, CA, says he sees one or two GM vehicles a week with Dex-Cool problems. A few have been reported as early as 20,000 miles. Many of the complaints say the problems appear to begin around 60,000 miles, well beyond the engine’s warranty but sooner than many customers believe they should have problems with their cooling systems. The agency rejected a call for a defect investigation in 2002, saying the problems weren’t safety related and was therefore outside its purview.
#DEXCOOL COOLANT NEAR ME FREE#
Mixing Dex-Cool with another coolant can cause other problems, and GM doesn’t recommend using other coolants in Dex-Cool engines, although some mechanics do swap coolants.Ībout 110 complaints of coolant leaks in the GM vehicles targeted by the lawsuit have been filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, according to a Free Press review. Replacing a gasket usually runs about $700, but a bad gasket can cause enough damage that the engine has to be replaced. The troubles blamed on Dex-Cool range from leaking coolant to blown engines, and often include failed intake manifold gaskets, pieces that rest between the engine block and the air intake to prevent coolant and oil from leaking. Three similar lawsuits has been filed in Canada, while a state lawsuit in Missouri has already won class-action status, a decision GM is appealing. Patrick Murphy could rule at any time whether the cases, which have about 100 named plaintiffs, should be granted class-action status, meaning they could represent millions of former and current GM owners. Six of the federal lawsuits have been consolidated in a federal court in East St. “The recent motion to certify a class action is unfortunate,” said GM spokeswoman Geri Lama, “and the situation with our customers has been grossly overstated through unsubstantiated allegations in statements which have not been proven in court and will be vigorously defended.” In its court filings, the automaker says Dex-Cool “has performed without problems in the vast majority of GM vehicles.”
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GM claims that the owners manual clause was not a warranty, but a service interval. “There’s a significant public interest in this problem, no question about that.” “What we’re looking for is to have GM step up and honor its warranty obligation,” said Eric Gibbs, a San Francisco attorney and one of the lead lawyers for the owners.
automaker to use it.Īttorneys for the owners say that clause means GM should repair any Dex-Cool-related problems, even if they crop up outside the engine’s typical three-year or 36,000-mile engine warranty. Dex-Cool uses a different set of chemicals to protect engine parts than traditional green-colored coolant, which requires more frequent replacement, and GM was the first U.S.
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When GM introduced the orange-colored Dex-Cool, it said in owners manuals that Dex-Cool could last up to five years or 100,000 miles without being replaced, and later extended Dex-Cool’s life to 150,000 miles. The company has issued several technical bulletins to its dealers about cooling-related problems in the engines, but says it prefers to handle customer complaints on a case-by-case basis. Court documents show that GM has received tens of thousands of repair requests related to Dex-Cool and engine gaskets in the affected models and considered recalls for some models. According to GM, 14 federal and state lawsuits seeking class-action status have been filed against GM over a variety of engine problems linked to Dex-Cool.Ĭustomers have complained of problems ranging from small coolant leaks to complete radiator and engine failure. The suits stem from GM’s use of Dex-Cool, a coolant it first introduced in its vehicles in 1995 and sold in more than 35 million cars and trucks between 19. will face a national class action suit accusing GM of selling millions of vehicles with a faulty coolant. A federal judge may soon rule whether General Motors Corp.
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