Phil's Points and Plugs

Well, it is official. The new name for the column will be Phil's Points and Plugs. Charles Mihulka is the winner of the $100.00 gift certificate for suggesting the name back in February. He should be receiving his notification about the same time that all of you are reading this. I want to thank all of you who participated in the contest and I will do my best to make sure that this article lives up to its new name.

As I mentioned at the end of last month's article General Motors has agreed to a class action settlement of the various lawsuits which have been filed against it for problems related to the Dex-Cool coolant which it began using in 1995 model year vehicles. GM has not admitted any wrongdoing and still argues that the coolant protected engines for a longer period than traditional coolants, caused less wear on certain engine parts than traditional coolants and provided environmental benefits.

Dex-Cool was one of the first coolants to be "factory filled" and promoted as a long life replacement for traditional antifreeze. Traditional antifreeze breaks down in about 2 years in most cases and becomes more acidic. In order to protect engine metals a coolant needs to be on the alkaline side of neutral. Dex-Cool and other long life coolants do not break down as quickly and thus offer longer life to the vehicle owner and the potential savings of lower maintenance costs. But the history of Dex-Cool has not been good when it comes to certain failures which have been related to the coolant.

We first began to see failures in 1996 Blazers and Jimmys when the radiators were coming in plugged with sludge that looked like red mud. GM said the radiator caps were at fault and that flushing and cap replacement were all that was needed. But in the next few years we began to see intake and other gasket failures in other GM vehicles as well. While other manufacturers have insisted that their testing indicated Dex-Cool would attack certain types of plastics used in gaskets and that was why their long life coolants used a different formula, GM maintained that was not the cause of the gasket failures. However, it would now appear that the courts are going to decide otherwise.

Because we have seen and fixed many of these issues for our customers over the past 13 years I encourage anyone who owned or still owns a 1995 to 2003 General Motors vehicle to go to www.modexcool.com to read about the tentative nationwide settlement on this issue. We will be glad to help you locate the records you will need to claim some reimbursement for the expenses you may have incurred.

Next month I am going to focus on fuel economy and what you can do to decrease the amount of fuel your vehicle uses. If you have any other questions which you think would be of general interest, please email me at phil@philsproautoservice.com Until then......


Phil