quote: Originally posted by FowVay: Bar's sells three different kinds of stop leak that I've seen: a dark brown liquid that comes in a grey bottle, gold colored hard pellets that you crumble by hand that comes on a cardboard card, and a gold colored powder that you simply add to the radiator.
CJH,
Have you seen any results yet with the stop leak?. The level in my coolant overflow tank has gone down about a 1/2" in the last month but I still see no signs of coolant in my oil, under the PCV valve, or oil in the coolant. I bought some of the Barr's stop leak but have not put it in yet. I'm thinking of going this route but would like some more input before I do.
Bit hard to see that it is a coolant leak if you haven't added any in the last 12,000m. Sounds more like additives in the oil sample IMO.
Personally not a great fan of stop leaks. I get concerned about what that product is doing to the rest of the coolant system. Holden here do recomend pellets for some motors, mainly for water pump lubrication, but I have ceased using it since changing over to water and RL Water Wetter. A mechanic said that the water pumps died at 100,00k regardless of lubricant pellets anyhow.
First 2500 is hardly a test of an oil! With the suspected coolant leak I under stand the early sampleing though. Bar Leaks is the OEM product installed.
This should not be added to the Cadilac CTS!!! THe high efficency Denso Heater core will plug up almost instantly if a sealer is added to the coolant!
Sealer are not a true solution just a band aid! IF you have a bad gasket you need to fix it. It will either be an intake gasket or a head gasket that leakes when cold. I would suspect the a head gasket that only leaks when cold.
IF it turns out to be the intake gasket they should really consider piggy backing the OEM sealer bead with additional(thin bead ) of RTV prior to assemble! GM is haveing an insane amount of intake gasket leaks!!!
A bad intake gasket will also just leak when cold. My intake gasket would only leak when the truck was cold but it was leaking on the outside. This time if its an intake leak, its leaking on the inside.
It doesn't sound like the barr's leak is the way to go but at this point I don't know where the leak is coming from and cannot afford to start tearing the engine apart trying to find it.
