ecodiesel oil in coolant

[Mharrison]

This is one that definitely spooks me a bit this is becoming more and more prevalent as these trucks are hitting 20 to 40k miles...warranties ease the blow to some extent but you still have to drive a vehicle that isn't yours. And it's normally a hemi which gets half or less the fuel mileage.

 

[BoostN]

Yea, it seems to be more common lately. From what I'm reading, they don't have a fix yet right? They keep flushing the coolant tanks and not really finding the root cause of the problem.

 

[Mharrison]

I was under the impression it was a cooler failure...

 

[Nanooser]

Oil cooler is on back order and I'm told they are going to flush the motor 5 times. Without a fix to the cooler issue, whats to stop this from happening again?

 

[Mharrison]

Sounds like FCA needs to come up with a fix for this asap...you can't have a customer service nightmare like this happening and telling people you are just going to fluch the system...that won't work!

 

[Nanooser]

Overall, I really love my eco-diesel. Its delivered incredible mileage and rides like a dream on the highway where I spend much of my time (45000kms/yr). The service guys at my dealership have been top notch, keeping me informed, rental vehicle within a half hour, waiving extra mileage. With 1000's of parts, and being the first year, I'm not shocked that something like this happened. Let's hope the engineers solve this and I'm on the road soon.

 

[Brady]

Overall, I really love my eco-diesel. Its delivered incredible mileage and rides like a dream on the highway where I spend much of my time (45000kms/yr). The service guys at my dealership have been top notch, keeping me informed, rental vehicle within a half hour, waiving extra mileage. With 1000's of parts, and being the first year, I'm not shocked that something like this happened. Let's hope the engineers solve this and I'm on the road soon.

That's a pretty good attitude to have with this. Hope everything works out for you.

 

[moparecodiesel]

I am really sorry and I really wish nobody had to deal with the coolant issue, but after doing two of these myself so far, holy cow is it a pain in the butt, I have to reflush my truck at the end of august. After doing the last one a couple weeks ago, I installed the peak flush& fill kit on the heater hose like I said in my video, and it went perfect, quick and painless. I used two plastic hose pinch clamps and moved them around on various places to force coolant through different tubes, I saw how if I didn't do that coolant would stay in certain areas of the system.
Now to be fair your dealer couldn't do that backyard mechanic stuff because they would be draining coolant and oil into the sewer, so its really difficult for them to get everything out using their EPA legal coolant suck and fill system,
But after doing these two engines, its my opinion I think the coolant is changing color due to an imbalance between the acid and the organic material, I noticed right when my coolant changed to the orange color, that's when my cooling system started dissinigrating. Now that's just my observation, and im not saying that's what is happening and don't run to the dealer, because as the first picture shows, that coolant is still purple,
But both the systems I repaired had the solder eaten away and one of the oil coolers had pot marks and was eaten in many places.
Im going to switch my coolant to the Low Tox antifreeze based on propelyne glycol instead of the OAT. But that's my truck, I do weird things to it.

 

[Mharrison]

The problem with swapping from OAT to glycol based is typically the seals in the system won't like it and shrink up and start leaking. We have had this happen in our tractors as we are now running OAT coolant in our tier 4 fiat power train engines

 

[moparecodiesel]

You are definetely right. It's amazing how many different types of coolant formulas there are and after 115 years we still can't get it right.

 

[Mharrison]

Ya no kidding....we are one of the last tractor manufacturers to make the switch to OAT cat and cummins started it years ago. So far I have been less than impressed mostly due to the to catastrophic things that can happen if someone messes up and puts standard antifreeze in them....the two do not play nice together.

 

[Nanooser]

New oil cooler installed and 5 flushes later I'm back on the road. New coolant reservoir on order as there's a dark line on this one. General smell of coolant for the first day, but that has since passed. Mileage hasnt changed (9.7 l/100km or US 24mpg) on average. Checking coolant daily for colour/oil, so far so good, faith shaken, not broken.

 

[Mharrison]

What was the repair turn around tine?

 

[Nanooser]

It was 6 days. The oil cooler took a few days to show up, and there was a weekend in there. Had the cooler been there, i would say 2 days would do it as the coolant flush x 5 takes a full day. Dealership maintains that mine is the first they have seen with this.

 

[Mharrison]

Wow...6 days is fantastic most issues I have heard have been 3 weeks plus.

 

[Mharrison]

A customer of mine just got his back after the cooler failure after 3.5 weeks. But they stated they replaced every component that coolant touches except the engine of course. They also claimed there was no information or service bulletins on this failure and they had never heard of it before...

 

[Varoum]

highway where I spend much of my time (45000kms/yr).

Geeeee! 450 000 KMS per year 300 000 miles per year. Do you live in your truck? Or you have other drivers?

 

[Nanooser]

One zero too many Varoum, 45,000km/yr.
interesting that Chrysler would recommend replacing all parts in one instance, and just the cooler in another. Am monitoring coolant and oil daily, taking photos of each for reference. There is a very small skim of oil on the top of my coolant reservoir. I'm thinking its residue that the 5 flushes missed, hasnt changed and am thinking residual oil will collect on top and not recirculate, any comments on this theory?

New reservoir on order, thinking another flush before its installed would be wise.

 

[moparecodiesel]

What I found in the two I've done is to hook up a flush&fill kit on the heater core line and let the water push all the nasty stuff up and out the top of the old resivoir bottle . Do that and a couple run drain flush cycles, and once it's clear drain, reflush, drain, replace old resivoir bottle and fill only with straight coolant and it's fine. My second one was perfect but I have to redo mine in a couple weeks

 

[Mharrison]

What I found in the two I've done is to hook up a flush&fill kit on the heater core line and let the water push all the nasty stuff up and out the top of the old resivoir bottle . Do that and a couple run drain flush cycles, and once it's clear drain, reflush, drain, replace old resivoir bottle and fill only with straight coolant and it's fine. My second one was perfect but I have to redo mine in a couple weeks

How many failures have you had mopar? 2?