Coolant Repair Leak: $800 vs. my oil leak repair of $430 at a repair shop?
 

hi,

i will make this direct as possible

my car is leaking coolant, it did so less when a new radiator cap was put on to replace the cracked one

also a coolant temp sensor reduced high temps since it activates the Camaro's air fans.

so i thought everything went well until just 2 days ago I drove 9 hours off an on in the hot sun and the temp gauge went to like 265 a couple of marks below the red zone

and I also had to add 8 oz. of coolant after 9 hours of driving off and on

so i go to the repair shop which charged me $430 to seal my oil leak and now they tell me well in addition to the 1) new radiator cap, 2) the coolant temp sensor, 3) we now need lots of labor to seal a coolant leak because its behind covers and gaskets.

So, the total cost is $800

they told me gm usually puts in "k seal" tablets with these models since I don't know I think the coolant system on a 4th Gen has inherent flaws / defects?

so, he told me to wait a couple of days because he added k seal tabs to my car and then save up $800 to have a permanent fix.

my car has an external leak where the coolant leaks on to my pavement when I park so it's not a blown headgasket or a cracked block\

my car has never overheated btw
\
MY question basically is.....does this sound reasonable? did anway come acrosss this problem before and have to pay that much at a repair shop?

$800 is like almost a 1000 bucks to fix a blown head gasket.

does a coolant leak fix involving getting behind covers gasket and the water pump really entail so much labor that with parts and labor it comes out to $800?

thanks again for any helpful advice.

Try somewhere else and get a quote from them also. What are they doing for 800.? Replacing the water pump? That is a pain but can be done at home,go online watch a vid and decide if you want to give it a try.

some shops do selective up-pricing I guess; 430 bucks for an oil repair leak to hook u in as a regular customer and then on a repair that may cost $350; they will up sell me to what $800? the camaro's guts is hard to get into. lots of ppl know that. In fact, Midas and other places wanted to charge at least $700 to repair my oil leak (because they had to actually hoist the engine to get to the oil pan etc), so I was way hooked into this repair shop which was favorably reviewed lots of times on yelp dot com at that $430 super deal price when the going rate probably was a lot higher. now they want to really slap on a higher cost ? i don't know who to trust, but another guy his neighbor (a repair shop neighbor adjacent to him) and he is older and i am taking it to him tomorrow, he's a dale earnhArdt sr. fan and is old school. so he probably has a lot of experience. i want it done right. this is an annoying problem.

I have hot heard of fixing leaks permanent without replaceing parts ,like if it your water pumps weep hole could be leaking ,if it was the radiator there like $60.00, the thing is to figure out where it is leaking youself with a friend ,then you know if this shop is telling the truth ,try another shop too,sounds weird ,if there not clearly saying you need a head gasket or manifold most replace them all,but yes take it to the older guy too

therer many places where coolant can leak, hoses can have tiny holes, weep hole from water pump as mentioned, the overflow reservoir as there is a thin hose underneath that gets corroded, a leaky radiator etc. As hard as it can be, u need to determine where the leak is to properly fix, a pressure test can help too, it may not b a head gasket but if left untreated will eventually f up cooling system and blow head gasket, if u go to shop make sure they guarantee the fix. Not too many places like the LT1....

GM puts K-seal in their cars? That is news to me. I have never heard of that mentioned in any GM class or read it in any GM manual. In fact GM is very clear when you have a coolant leak you fix it. Sealer tend to plug up smaller passages and is cause for rejecting a warranty claim.

I have seen customer ruin their engine to seal a leak that ended up being a loose clamp.

i am not even putting in Bar's Radiant Stop Leaking Sealing tablets, a highly rated product on my own, despite great customer service reviews on Amazon dot com & elsewhere.

it's on to the dude with more experience, not the guys I thought I trusted, he did great work on replacing a cracked radiator, replacing the coolant temp sensor which activates the cooling air fans, which all reduced the high temp.s significantly and which showed more coolant in the reservoir after a few days,

but now the coolant leaking from the reservoir after parking onto the pavement is way too much

1 day After 9 hours not of continuous driving but of driving for the most part with chunks of 1 - 45 min. breaks, I should not be losing 8 oz. of coolant. That's what I put in after I parked at the end of that day.

also these guys I spent 430 bucks on an oil leak fix and to replace my coolant temp sensor didn't top off my coolant after they did that diagnosis which came out to $800, the coolant reservoir was near empty and the head dude behind the desk, the manager tried to upsell me on a New water pump and later admitted nothing was wrong with the old one

I am not making an exact analogy, but let's say in the on-line world there are selective scammers: those that do impressive and right by you 7 out of 10 times, then screw you on the 8 , 9, and 10th time with royally high prices or they just don't plain deliver.

by the way , a pressure test was done obviously before and I specifically requested one be done after the coolant temp was replaced (this was 1 - 2 weeks ago), now as mentioned, the last 2-3 days, coolant in the reservoir has for some strange reason been leaking more and getting worse.

the good news is the temp is not really too high too many times as before the cracked radiator cap and before the broken coolant temp sensor which activated the fans.


so the 4th gen. is not easy to get to, I guess the cooling system is Even Worse than the oil pan system or worse than how to get to and reach and oil leak and fix it since the oil leak repair at the same shop was $430 now they want to charge me double that--800 bucs to fix a coolant leak.

thanks everyone.

i am not even putting in Bar's Radiant Stop Leaking Sealing tablets, a highly rated product on my own, despite great customer service reviews on Amazon dot com & elsewhere.

it's on to the dude with more experience, not the guys I thought I trusted, he did great work on replacing a cracked radiator, replacing the coolant temp sensor which activates the cooling air fans, which all reduced the high temp.s significantly and which showed more coolant in the reservoir after a few days,

but now the coolant leaking from the reservoir after parking onto the pavement is way too much

1 day After 9 hours not of continuous driving but of driving for the most part with chunks of 1 - 45 min. breaks, I should not be losing 8 oz. of coolant. That's what I put in after I parked at the end of that day.

also these guys I spent 430 bucks on an oil leak fix and to replace my coolant temp sensor didn't top off my coolant after they did that diagnosis which came out to $800, the coolant reservoir was near empty and the head dude behind the desk, the manager tried to upsell me on a New water pump and later admitted nothing was wrong with the old one

I am not making an exact analogy, but let's say in the on-line world there are selective scammers: those that do impressive and right by you 7 out of 10 times, then screw you on the 8 , 9, and 10th time with royally high prices or they just don't plain deliver.

by the way , a pressure test was done obviously before and I specifically requested one be done after the coolant temp was replaced (this was 1 - 2 weeks ago), now as mentioned, the last 2-3 days, coolant in the reservoir has for some strange reason been leaking more and getting worse.

the good news is the temp is not really too high too many times as before the cracked radiator cap and before the broken coolant temp sensor which activated the fans.


so the 4th gen. is not easy to get to, I guess the cooling system is Even Worse than the oil pan system or worse than how to get to and reach and oil leak and fix it since the oil leak repair at the same shop was $430 now they want to charge me double that--800 bucs to fix a coolant leak.

thanks everyone.

so the coolant is leaking from the coolant reservoir area? if so i would say the pipe/hose that runs from the radiator to it is most likely the problem. could also be the coolant res itself. pressure test should show where leak is if its a hose or such but if its in the overflow it won't.

thanks, Craby, i just got this now and will share with a mechanic. :)

Perhaps he meant these. From the GM F-car 94 service manual:

"Minor water pump weepage and minor engine cooling
system leaks may be corrected by adding two sealant
pellets to the cooling system. The pellets are available
from GMSPO in packages of six under GM P/N 3634621."

whole front cover has to be taken off to get to a 93 camaro 4th gen. cooling system and seal the leak (s). It is labor intensive. at this shops hourly rate of 80 bucks an hour I estimate maybe 9 hours of labor? since the parts are cheap. there is no head gasket blown, all of this was from my recent conversation 1 hour ago again with the repair shop owner wanting to charge me 800 bucks to repair my coolant leak. it probably goes without saying that he did a pressure test, in fact, I asked him to do so once before and after he did work on it and he said he would. thanx everyone for ur input.

why does the front nose need to come off I never heard of that ,some guys can take out a whole engine in about the same time , that's about what it took to take my lt1 out 8 hours ,the plastics on the bottom may have to come off takes like 15 minutes ,it should not be that labor intensive ,,9 hours sounds like way to long for any one thing ,seems a whole cooling system could be put in in that amount of time radiator hoses water pump heater core ,,now a good head gasket job where they machine your heads an replace all the gaskets could take that long

i have a 93 and can take the whole cooling system out without taking the front bumper cover off the car or much of anything else.

timing cover is in the way whole timing chain cover has to be taken a part and put back together. in order to seal the leaking coolant area. 800 bucks :(

I went searching for those. Looks like there was a service bulletin released that said opps, don't use those. Great reviews on the net tho.


Looks like the 3.4 timing chain cover is a fairly common issue. 5 year old thread.
https://camaroforums.com/forum/93-02...k-again-60519/

I ran into a similar problem with my daughters 99 Camaro with 3.8 liter. By the way, I also have two 97 Z28s with LT1s. I have worked on these cars over 10 years. It would be helpful to know which engine you have. On the 3.8, there are a few areas that can leak beyond what you and others have said. I know the gasket between the timing cover and the block can leak too. It is a beach to do since the crank pulley is torqued on about 150 lbs. Once the timing cover gets replaced the front edge to the oil pan can leak oil, so then the oil pan gasket may need replacing. Over 3 hrs labor on timing cover and over 4 hrs on oil pan gasket. Also the heater hose connections on the 3.8 totally suck. I used metal connectors with o-rings off an Oldsmobile or Bonneville with the direction facing the firewall. Connectors are (2) 5/8 and heater core has 5/8 and 3/4 so a size converter is needed. Or just use a 3/4 OD short pipe. Used std heater 5/8 and 3/4 hose. I re-sealed the new water pump using grade 8 bolts. I also replaced the old thermostat. Since the water pump bolts go through the timing cover, I decided to make sure they were good and tight and therefore didn't have to pull the timing cover or oil pan. I also replaced the crappy heater hose clamps from the factory. I pulled the reservoir bottle and flushed it. Then I used a 20 lbs cap for a 99 Jeep V8 instead of the crappy 18 lbs caps from the normal retailers. Now the coolant is being pulled from the bottle to radiator. No leaks so far. The LT1s are slightly different but much of this applies except the timing cover.

he has the 94 3.4l wich was a 2 year run pretty much

*Hi, I have a 93, 3.4L

3 hrs and then 4 hrs what u quoted above at 95 dollars an hour mechanic shop fee labor is 7 hrs x 95 bucks = $665 in just labor there, not including what other clumsy problems the mechanic may or may not run into. The parts are cheap, tho.

This is the most expensive repair on a Camaro V-6; 3.4 L that I have ever run into. Since coolant when the car cools down expands onto from or near the intake, in the morning when the car is cool and I'm about to drive, turning it on makes a certain smoke come out the tail pipe which can ruin the engine.

All told the repairs in total at a more experienced mechanic are $1,092. I need to save 59 days for this repair and I'm driving it 10 miles every 2 days or only 3x per week and am constantly checking coolant levels in the morning when the motor is cool.

The coolant temp sensor which activates the air cooling fans didn't work so I had that replaced at 185 bucks out the door, it Did cool it down a lot more.

I think part of the problem of my car running higher than usual temps like 1-2 lines below the red overheat temp gauge zone is that I am only allowed to drive on surface streets. I drive 10 miles on surface streets every 2 days.

but when I do drive on long stretches of land with almost no stop lights or stop signs the car is at a lower temp, since it gets naturally cooled with the wind?

I also asked another friend if putting a car in Neutral at a legal stop will lower temps since it doesn't hum when it's in neutral.

He didn't know.

Maybe you or someone else knows?

This friend did say turning the heat up all the way instead of the air conditioning will cool the motor down which I found that odd.

My knob on the AC // Heating is super glued on cooling here in Southern Calif. so I don't want the heating dial to work nor do I need it to.

I understand that people are here to save money on DIY.

but I have a head injury and I also have no time or patience in doing it myself only for the problem to still be there.

I want it fixed right the 1st time and in 2 days max.

Thanks again for everyone's input.