In December of 2010 I had to have my car a 2001 Buick LaSabre in to replace intake manifold gaskets and the thermostat because of coolant leak. GM knew about this problem with Dex Coolant and never told anyone and just let people drive when they knew there was a problem. They didn't recall the cars because they wanted to keep it a secret. I think that is wrong and it cost me 779.45 to have it fixed. I called Schepel Buick were the repairs were done and I bought the car and talked to the service manager and explained the problem and he had the nerve to tell me that he has never heard of this problem and neither has GM because they would have known. They would not reimburse me for what is their fault. How could they not have know when its all over the internet???

I had the car at the dealers for a problem with the security system and after they charged me 400 dollars for reconnecting a wire jack they told me that I had a slight coolant leak up behind the intake manifold and that would repair it for only 700 dollars. Well, I envisioned it as perhaps a simple gasket leak near the thermostat housing and told them that they should not repair it. Never mind that I didn't have 700 dollars to spare after I felt they jipped me out of 400 to reconnect a loose wire. Well the car drove fine for over two years. I only had to add a little coolant every know and then. It struck me as odd that I never found any coolant on the driveway and I did wonder where it might be going, but I didn't do anything. After finding out by some other posts on this site that the problem can really turn into something major, I imagine that the dealership knew exactly what the leak was, and I feel they were negligent in not explaining it more fully to me. Anyway, the coolant loss became more and more noticeable and my car started running hot sometimes (though not really, really hot). Still I had no clue what was happening. Then one cold morning, a few days after I had my oil changed, my engine developed a knock or tap that would last several minutes when it was cold and then go away. I had a friend of mine from church (who is a mechanic) listen to it, and he thought that it was just a bad lifter and told me not to worry about it. A couple weeks later the 'check engine light' came on so I decided to change my oil, myself, to see if that would help anything. I put a 20w/50 oil designed for an older car into it. While changing the oil, I noticed that there was froth on the oil filler cap and knew that I found where my mysteriously missing coolant had been going. No coolant was found in the oil drain pan though, so it must have evaporated. Anyway, the new oil made the tap/knock go away for a few weeks. Then it came back again. So now I change the oil with the cheapest quaker state stuff I can find at walmart every few weeks and that seems to keep me going. But I'm really worried that the tapping sound might be a spun bearing. And I'm wondering if there is a cheap fix for this problem. And now, I am also wondering why Buick doesn't take some responsibility for this obvious design error.