AUBURN – Whenever William Sutton turned a corner, he could hear something splashing in the engine of his 1999 Chevy Lumina. He ignored the sound until his heat stopped working.

When technicians at Remco Radiator & Auto Shop lifted the hood of Sutton’s car, they found clumps of brown sludge in various parts of the engine.

They broke the news to Sutton: He needed a new water pump, an intake gasket and a heater core.

The same mud-like sludge was found in Randall Brotherton’s Chevy Venture, Ryan Frost’s GMC Sierra, and in dozens of other General Motors vehicles that have driven into Remco Radiator over the past several years.

According to the owners of the Auburn radiator shop, the sludge is a by-product of a special anti-freeze that General Motors encourages its customers to use in their cars.

The anti-freeze, called Dex-Cool, is guaranteed to last five years or 150,000 miles before it needs to be changed.

General Motors advertises the coolant as a superior product that is safer for the environment and more cost-efficient for customers.

But others insist it is far from great. The bright orange coolant has been blamed for ruining radiators, water pumps, intake gaskets and other car parts by turning to sludge and clogging up spots in the cooling system.

General Motors owns the trademark for Dex-Cool. It began filling its cars and light trucks with it in 1996.

Since then, class-action lawsuits have been filed against GM and the maker of the coolant in several states, including Missouri, California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

A class-action suit has not been filed in Maine. But, according to the owners of two local radiator shops, it is not because people here haven’t experienced problems.

“Most of them come in because they lose their heat,” said an employee at Lincoln Street Radiator Shop in Lewiston. “We investigate and find it all sludged up.”

In the past two weeks, Remco Radiator replaced three intake gaskets and a radiator destroyed by Dex-Cool, said co-owner Debra York.

“A lot of Mainers are not aware of what this stuff is doing,” York said.

If the problem is caught early enough, York said, a mechanic can flush the cooling system and replace Dex-Cool with regular anti-freeze.

But, she added, it is often too late.

Brotherton, of Lewiston, had to replace the radiator, water pump and intake gasket in his van. Ryan Frost, of Auburn, paid $284 to put a new head gasket in his truck. Sutton, who lives in Poland, paid about $1,000 for his new parts.

“I have kids,” he said. “I have to have heat in the car.”
S10 Blazers
General Motors has issued a technical service bulletin, warning customers and mechanics that Dex-Cool can become a problem when an engine goes more than 20,000 miles with insufficient levels of coolant in the radiator.

“There are 35 to 40 million GM vehicles on the road that use Dex-Cool,” General Motors wrote in a statement, responding to a class-action suit in New York. “The overwhelming majority has experienced no problems with the cooling system.”

Bob White, the service manager at Emerson Chevrolet in Auburn, said he has only seen Dex-Cool turn to the reddish-brown sludge in S10 Blazers. And, in most cases, he said, it is because the vehicle is low on coolant.

Employees at both Lincoln Radiator Works and Remco Radiator said many of the cars are Blazers. But, they said, all types of GM cars come in with problems.

“And maybe 1 percent come in without enough coolant,” said York, arguing against General Motors’ claim that it is a maintenance problem.

York warned that Dex-Cool cannot be mixed with other coolants. A system must be flushed before a different anti-freeze is added, she said.
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