pnwjay

Story is, this dealer replaced my valve cover gaskets. I get the car back from them after repairs and it’s still leaking. I have them take another look and they do a ‘UV test’ to determine if the leak is ‘new oil’. They tell me it’s fine and no new oil is being released. I go on my way and keep driving. During the repairs they also cracked the radiator on a road test. I’m told it was an inevitable fault from the valve cover oil leaking onto the coupling for the radiator, so i paid to have it replaced.

Last Sunday, approx 3 weeks after all my repairs I’m pulling out of the parking lot at 10mph and I see lots of white smoke coming from the engine. I turn the car off quickly and pop the hood, coolant everywhere. I assume the radiator busted again.

It gets taken to the shop and they look at it. I’m told today the following by my service advisor;
”Pics of your lower hose that’s part of a phenolic plastic coupler where the hose branches off. You can see towards the bottom section of pic the hose is still attached at radiator which is the portion the technician actually removed when replacing your radiator. I’m told that this is not an uncommon failure on these designs. Also verified passenger valve cover is definitely leaking so were obviously going to reseal that under warranty. Your engine oil cooler is leaking down below so I’ll be sending estimate for replacement along with radiator hose.”

Im now concerned they don’t know what they’re doing because my valve cover gaskets were obviously still leaking and they told me it was fine. Could any of this be related to repairs they did when fixing the radiator originally? Do the repairs and pricing look accurate? Any other insight would be great. I’m decently mechanically inclined and am also open to doing ‘easier’ work on my own if that’s possible for any of this.

Any help/insight/recs would be great!! I will attach photos of the parts being requested to fix, photos of that night it was smoking and photos they sent me showing the issue. Thanks!



​​​​​​​

deadlyvt

They probably broke stuff not knowing what they were doing. You don't need to replace a radiator because you have a valve cover leak...

pnwjay

I may have been confusing in my explanation. The radiator currently is fine, I thought it busted at the time. They are telling me it’s the radiator hose is busted and the oil cooler is leaking.

They are redoing the gaskets under warranty because the initial repair didn’t take, even though I told them that and they said it was fine still.

Im going to call for a more in depth explanation, just wanted to see if I could get any opinions.

Phil_T

That left side lower coolant hose is a common failure point with age, I am surprised on a pre facelift car it hasn’t gone sooner (Just replace the hose that comes with a new clip)

The rocker cover should be entirely replaced, on the facelift ones they develop a hairline crack towards the back which can be hard to see. As you have a prefacelift with the aluminium rocker covers these can get warped from all the heat cycles. Unfortunately you can not buy these anymore and you will have to buy the plastic facelift ones which are more brittle and don’t last as long.

So to me they sound like they know what they are doing but tried the cheap option first with the rocker cover which doesn’t fix the issue on these cars.