I took my car to the dealer Saturday because I was getting a strong gas smell when I parked it in the garage at night. I was told that they had another C5 (older)that they had been waiting two months for a new gas tank, something to do with the fuel pump. I got the call just before they closed Saturday that I needed a new gas tank also. Since its still in warranty they rented me a car and said the new tank should be in Tuesday. This morning I get a call saying that someone else beat them to the tank and they were searching all dealerships for another one. I asked if I was going to be without my car for two months and was told that since they were renting me a car they should have one soon. Has anyone else heard of bad gas tanks?

 

Yes - in fact I need to go back and update my post from a few weeks ago. I have an '04 and had the same symptom - gas fumes in the garage. It took over two weeks for COH to troubleshoot and fix it. But they were going through learning curve and only replaced the seals on the fuel tank interconnect pipe (wrong name for it) the first week they had it. I brought it back for the second week and it took them another 8 days to figure out the drivers tank needed replacement. They didn't find any leaks in the original tank so they were reluctant to do the swap. But after checking with other Chevy mechanics they realized that there did seem to be a problem with these tanks. COH told me that they could tell the difference when the interconnect tube snapped into place on the new tank. My only problem right now is getting the fuel level sensors to work properly and show a full tank. It worked shortly after my post-tank swap fuel fill, but went bad on my second tank. I was waiting to get some results on this before updating my original post... The tank swap labor is only 4 hours, so it's not a big impact. But if someone does yours and they just replace the seals and that didn't work then there's another 4 hours to do the fuel tank. I think for this fix the shotgun approach is best and the fuel tank and seals should be done. This particular issue seems to be with the '04's that were upgraded to a new fuel system (FFS) in the mid-'03 timeframe. Good luck!

- Wisdom

 

Here's a recent post from another 2004 owner:

bad fuel tank in my 04

Good luck with yours!

 

Best of luck getting your car fixed and not taking two weeks.