As the title infers, I’m having an issue with spun bearings and a cracked crankshaft in my 2018 Camaro SS with only 37k miles. The car does have a supercharger on it, but it’s only pushing just under 500hp at Colorado altitude.
The dealer is wanting to say that the supercharger caused the issue, and as such needs a brand new engine - not covered under warranty with the supercharger installed. The only issue is, myself, my mechanic that has the vehicle right now, and all the Chevy techs all say there’s very, very little chance that spun bearings could have caused this crack in the crankshaft. The mechanic is betting that it was a factory defect and that over time it expanded, thus causing the bearings to be destroyed. Everyone except the dealership, who has basically refused to look at it or be willing to submit a warranty claim themselves, believes that before the crankshaft were to crack, I would have bent rods and a plethora of other things before this giant, hunk of metal, would crack in such a clean and parallel way. The service manager for whatever reason is afraid of submitting any claim or basically assisting me in anyway, due to unknown reasons (and he’s also mad I called out the service department for not identifying a very clear knocking noise during their inspection, as well as scratching my bumper very badly).
The story of how it happened was I was sitting at an intersection whilst on lunch break, and the car died on me, puffed a little smoke, then went into limp mode (later found out decreased power due to 7&8 cylinders having less compression due to the knock and bearings). Dealership takes it in, says it’s a boost leak, I fox supposed “boost leak”. Drive it home, notice the clicking/knocking noise from the bottom end, drive it back, and they basically deny me service and don’t contact me back for a few weeks - and they also scratched my bumper very badly whilst in service with them.
Before that, there were zero issues - no over heating, no knocking, no blown head gaskets, etc. Everything in the engine, according to my mechanics are good. There’s no scaring anywhere. No signs of impact on the pistons from the cylinders , lifter roller bearings good, lifter springs good, guides good, basically everything is good except the cracked crankshaft and the destroyed bearings - even the rod connected to everything is perfectly fine, no bends or cracks. All other portions of the crankshaft is perfectly fine, it’s just the one little part with the crack, seen in the photo. All regular, and even then some, maintenance and oil changes were always done.
The vehicle was driven exactly 18 miles between the start of the issue and between it being towed to a different mechanic. During that time, it was not in boost and was driven very very gently, as I knew there was an issue with it. Everyone so far says there’s no way that the supercharger could have caused the issues, and that it was a pre-existing defect that caused issues.
The dealer is basically throwing me to the wind, saying I need to contact GM myself and have them figure it out and tell the dealership what to do. So far, that has proven useless as the phone support is very lacking in the 5-6 times I’ve called.
Are there any higher up personnel here that I’d be able to contact with my problem/get input from? This one seriously has myself and my mechanics stumped, as everyone agrees this is very very uncommon and shouldn’t have happened and I really am not enjoying getting the runaround from the dealership, as fun as circles are.
Any advice or help is very much appreciated. Thanks all!
