TonyCool

Hi fellow corvette members,

We are stuck in Leavenworth WA and I'm wondering if someone with a trailer could help us tow our corvette to Corvettes of Auburn. We can cover the cost of Gas and something extra for the bother.

My wife and I decided to go for a nice drive to Leavenworth Washington in our 2005 Corvette. Everything was going great until suddenly the engine temperature started going up at an scary rate the check coolant light came on, then the engine light came on, then the check oil warning.

We were fortunately already a few feet from our destination so I was able to immediately park the car safely in a public parking lot. Though at that point the engine had overheated past the red mark on the temperature gauge. I opened the hood to realize the car had spilled all of the coolant.

Last week I took the car to Dan at Corvettes of Auburn and spent over $4000 on maintenance, got a new ATI balancer, water pump, ac compressor, had all fluids bleed and flushed. I think something was not done correctly that caused the coolant to spill and the engine to overheat.

I'm hoping there is a lose hoes or something small and praying there was no serious engine damage. I'm still a bit in shock . if any of you guys could help us out to save some money that will be great.

Blessings,

Tony

JETninja

I have no way to help in getting you home, but I suggest you go to a Market, buy 4-6 jugs of Distilled Water. Pour in what it will take, start it and let it get warm (have the heater on full hot also so the heater core gets filled) and fill it as best as you can. If it keeps the temp under 230 you should be fine for the drive. Could be they just didn't bleed it well enough. Make sure your belts are all good also.

Water alone is a better coolant that water/coolant mix. (many race cars only run water) And its not cold enough to worry about freezing.

If anything needs replacing in a cooling system, I replace it all. Its only as good as its weakest link. My '04Z has never had an issue, I flushed it last year. 44K and climbing..

TonyCool

After I parked the car I refilled the coolant reservoir. I started the engine and it started fine but after two or three minutes the coolant started spilling everywhere and the engine overheated again.

I didn't try turning on the heater though. Do you think that would make any difference?

I think there is something serious going on and I don't want to risk engine damage.

Maybe something went wrong when the installed the water pump and flushed the coolant out of the system. It certainly seems related to what they did.

Also I'm pretty sure the coolant mixed with the oil and messed it up. Coolant was going out of the exhaust as well and the rear bumper got soaked in coolant. I removed all coolant from the paint immediately.

Tony

JMB

Sounds like the thermostat make be stuck....if you have access to any hand tools I'd yank it out and try again.

DidntSettle

If you have coolant going out the tail pipe, you are correct: You have a major problem. Is it actually in the oil on the dipstick? Foamy? It may be a bad head gasket.

YNOT2K

This would not answer why the coolant is spilling out.

You will need to find the source of the leak and fix it to be safe on the road.

I suggest you Call Corvettes of Auburn and ask them what they can do for you.

TonyCool

That's what I thought I won't start the car and hopefully will find a way to get it to Corvettes of Auburn.

TonyCool

I already called and sent email but they are closed over the weekend hopefully Dan will step in and help out.

Tony

c4cruiser

While it's a little late, things like this are why I have AAA and their Plus towing service. Leavenworth is more than 100 miles from Auburn (it's about 135 miles), but it would certainly cut the cost of the tow bill down. And the AAA Premium level provides for 200 miles of towing fro free.

Also when you check with Dan, ask him if he has a preferred towing company. Most auto shops will have one towing company that provides better rates to a shop than simply calling around for rates.

jasper711

Sometimes AAA can be purchased on the spur of the moment, and indeed sometimes the tow truck operator will suggest this.

VIK TOY

I would insist they pay for the tow and fix. You spent $4,,000 and this happened!!!!. Doesn't say much for Corvettes of Auburn. Glad we have Modern Classics and Tommy Wong down here!!

DidntSettle

Unless I missed something, the OP didn't describe anything that Corvettes of Auburn did that would cause coolant coming from the exhaust. Let's find out what the real problem is before blaming CoA. They are very reputable.

ExRedRacer

I'm glad we have C of A up here as well. I'm sure they'll be able to fix whatever is wrong.

Hey Keith...

Mr. Peabody

Really if you stop for a moment and think about it.... to say something like this about a local vendor ... that many of us have used over the years .... without any firsthand knowledge of what happened, is not very nice.

Let's give them a chance to make good before we bad mouth them on the forum. After all at this point they don't even know about the situation yet

DidntSettle

Hi Joe!

TonyCool

Hi Everyone,

We found a way to get the car to corvette of Auburn and it will be there waiting for Dan and their mechanics to look at it in the morning. I couple members of the local viper club got together to help me out. They really are great folks.

This is great to know I'll look into it.

I agree that Corvette of Auburn should take responsibility as this was clearly related to the water pump install, the thermostat and the coolant flush.

Contrary to what you state it's quite possible that a problem with the water pump, a badly attached hose or the thermostat could have caused the coolant to spill which in turn caused the engine the overheat which could have caused internal engine damage that could lead to coolant going out of the exhaust. I'm not stating this is what happen I simply don't know yet but I do believe that what happened is directly related to the work done by the shop as they basically replaced the whole cooling system and I never had and issue with the cooling system before the repair. It's not my intention to bad mouth Corvettes of Auburn or damage Dan reputation without first giving them a chance to make things right.

Hopefully Dan will step in, take responsibility if my assumptions are correct and help me out.

ExRedRacer

Please keep us posted and good luck.

TonyCool

I want to update this thread. I called Dan this morning, they had looked at the car already and found that the issue was indeed caused by the installation of the water pump. Thankfully it was also something very simple, one of the hose clamps out of the water pump came lose, the hose stayed in position but at pressure the coolant would spill everywhere causing the engine to overheat.

Dan explained that if an overheated engine condition exists the engine goes into a protection mode.

Searching in the forum about the overheat protection mode I found that the engine alternates firing groups of cylinders, this helps preventing engine damage. When the engine enters this mode you will notice a loss in power and engine performance but this operating mode allows the vehicle to be driven to a safe place in an emergency; it may be driven up to 50 miles (80 km).

After driving in the overheated engine protection operating mode you should allow the engine to cool before attempting any repair. The engine oil will be severely degraded. It's recommended to change the oil and reset the oil life system once the cooling issue has been addressed.

In my case Dan didn't replace the oil, he said that since I turned off the engine almost immediately the oil was fine.

My car was delivered to me today and I didn't pay a dime. Although I had to incur in some unplanned costs because of what happened I'm just happy my engine is in awesome shape and this didn't result in another nightmare story.

I have no way of knowing whether Dan would have taken responsibility if there had been any serious damage but for what is worth I'm very happy with their work and I think this was an unfortunate mistake on their part.

Tony

Mufflerbearing

Glad things worked out as well as they did.

TonyCool

Thanks me too. I'm glad it wasn't something bigger and even though it was a scary weekend at least I got a couple of cool pictures:






An some not so cool ones: