Quote:
Originally Posted by MT-SS1LE
How does water in the fuel lead to coolant leaks and a new engine? I wonder if you didn't already have the coolant leak and the fuel contamination is just a coincidence.
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No,no, they aren't related. It is coincidence that I got bad gas and then the dealer did a cylinder inspection first and found coolant then stopped looking for other issues. They assumed it ran awful because of the coolant in cylinders 5, 6, 7, & 8. Fair enough. Turns out, I already had a small coolant leak thru the block (my level was a bit low a few weeks earlier and I was going to visit the dealer to discuss).
In the end, I'm lucky. The coolant issue was found before the bad gas, which is good. Had the dealer listened to me and tested gas first, they would have never looked in the cylinders and I would have had the car returned to me, still leaking coolant a bit. Maybe I would have had the car back to them to investigate why coolant was disappearing. Maybe the leak would have become an issue when I was 8 hours from home. Last week, I drove 1300 miles in the loaner, a trip that would have taken place in the Camaro. I drove a loop around Lake Michigan (for work). I could have had the coolant leak cause issues when I was far from home. Because of the sequence of events, I was a 10 minute walk from my house when the bad gas made it thru the lines. And in the end, I get a new engine, which was needed anyway.
The bigger concern, as I see it now, is that my engine did not show any performance degridation even though coolant was leaking through. And the issue doesn't appear to be head gasket related or due to overheating. It appears to be a casting issue. Moving forward, all oil changes will be sent to Blackstone Labs for analysis. It's a small price to pay for monitoring of the engine internals, and certainly, I'll know to pay regular attention to coolant levels.