anthonyi

I must admit, I am a bit frustrated. I just found out that my radiator has a crack which is causing a small leak and they say it needs to be replaced. My car is an 08 4.2 with 91000 on it. Is it normal for the radiator to go out this soon on these cars? I have had other cars that I have owned for double the time and double the miles and never even had a leak so getting hit with almost a $1k expense on a 6 year old car with less than 100k miles kinda pisses me off.

I have had good service with this shop before, so I am hoping that they are screwing me as they are saying that it is a 5 hour job. Now is is really 5 hours or is that what the book says and it is more like a 3 hour job? I guess the bumper has to come off, so it sounds like it is a PITA, but I figure you all are a great resource so I would check here. I also asked them to check for anything else low cost that needs to be replaced while the thing is apart as I don't want to pay for 5 hrs labor to replace a $50 part a few months down the road because it did not get replaced while it was all apart now.

Thanks for any info you can give!

Anthony!

Prospeeder

No its not a normal thing to fail on these cars. It can happen. Now dont be getting all upset over book time on jobs. Its there for your protection Why should I have to be punished and be paid less because I can do it faster? How does that make sense? Should they charge you 10 hours because it took them 10 hours when the book says 2? No, its for your protection. It cost what it costs. You may consider doing drive belts, water pump, and thermostat while the front ends pulled out seeing as your approaching 100k.


Although im looking it up on Alldata and a radiator replacment on a 08 4.2 is 3.5 hours book time. So 5 hours is them padding it some which is bs. Unless there adding some time for diagnosis and test drive which still shouldnt be an extra hour and a half.

Mike141

I had to replace the radiator on my A8 that only had 70K on it. We had to remove the nose of that car also....I did timing belt at same time because we were in there already. It makes no sense...I had a Ford explorer with 296K on it with the stick radiator!! German engineering, I guess they missed the cooling.

KevinGary

Just had the radiator replaced on my 05 4.2 with 138k miles. I don't know if it is common or not, but you are not the only one.

raj99

All products/services set quality metrics which are usually captured under a MTBF (mean time between failures) calculation. For most equipment you want to ensure a higher tolerance and hence less variability of such failures. As others have indicated, radiators are not a common piece of maintenance, however they do fail from time to time. It could be a number of issues which lead to a failure, from internal failure to an external force (i.e. small rock) causing the issue.

Although your Explorer may have lasted longer than the A8, the N of 1 (sample size) is not demonstrative of how the product was designed.

As for removing the front of the C6...it's actually pretty easy to do. When I did the grille mod on my C6 it took less than 1 hour to remove it and after that access to the radiator is fairly easy. The replace the rad, I'd estimate a 3 hour book rate, 5 is certainly padding it.

Lastly, guess what item on your car is designed with a wide tolerance for failure...:

your <b>headlight bulbs</b>...since the last thing you would want is headlight bulbs which fail are almost the exact same time. They are in fact designed for a lower 6 sigma to ensure the MTBF have a wider range.

Fiery

I have also had to replace my rad last year A8 2.8, crack on bottom hose connection, all paid for by the AA BREAKDOWN COVER

NR04

My dealer told me my radiator was leaking and wanted $1K to replace. Upon inspection, it turned out my supercharger intercooler radiator had a small leak around the mounting tab. I already bought the genuine radiator for $230 and gonna tackle the job myself. I reckon it will take about 3 hours to do.

When I thought it was a main radiator, I looked it up on my Bentley and it is a bit pain to replace. Audi incorporated the transmission cooler in the same radiator. So although the actual replacement of the radiator is relatively straightforward, you have to perform the transmission fluid level check and that's a real pain to do. That might be the reason why the shop was quoting 5 hours.

Wake96c4

Unfortunately it is to be expected.

I grew up with cars that used all metal radiators. Since the 80s though, everything moved over to plastic tanks. I've replaced several radiators over the years due to cracks that developed in the plastic tanks, never lost the core though, it was always plastics that failed.

These things heat cycle and get shocked a lot over several years and tens of thousands of miles. My 05 with 83K miles also needed a new radiator due to the plastic around the lower hose neck cracking.

anthonyi

That sounds about right. I love most of the things about my car, I just wish the Germans could equal the Japanese on reliability because if the Japanese decode the German ride and style "code" and are able to produce a car that looks, rides and drives like a German with the reliability of a Japanese car they won't be able to keep them on the lot.

Anthony