What the hell am I doing in Las Vegas? I don’t like Las Vegas. Well, when I got to Yuma I was a gallon low on coolant, but couldn’t find any leaks. The engine oil looked great, as did the coolant reservoir. Then, I was adding about a half gallon a day with no signs of a leak. I started looking for a shop, preferably Goodyear because I might have a fighting chance should the work prove flawed when I’m in another city.
Since worst case now appeared likely, I wanted to be in a big city.
The shop here found the leak: the plastic quick connect to the heater core. I’ve seen other RV owners completely disabled by failures of these really stupid things, and I was glad I didn’t have them. But I was wrong, GM used them to connect the heater on my truck.
The really dumb thing is that the hose, a garden-variety heater hose, was attached to the quick-connect with a garden-variety hose clamp. So some engineer sleeps well at night knowing he took a perfectly reliable and fixable system and introduced a plastic part destined to fail.
You know what else is funny? While it is a quick-connect, the only way to disconnect it is to cut it into pieces. It’s a quick connect, not a quick disconnect. $18 for the plastic part, $230 for labor and coolant.
I’ll make a run to Hoover Dam tomorrow to check the repair, then I’ll set out to cross the Nevada desert.
Wow, only 250 bucks, I have put 8000 into my coolant leaks on my 2006 chevy.
I haven’t reached your level yet, but last summer I put several hundred into replacing coolant lines. And on deck is another few hundred that I have to spend soon.