That Damn Cruze

Some years ago I read in an article somewhere, that the coolant temperature gauge on some 1999 and up Chevrolet Camaros were not functional. The guage would come on and it would register getting up to the right temperature… but that’s all it would do. I never spent any time trying to figure out whether or not it was true, but it struck me as odd: Would GM really program a faux coolant temperature gauge? Well, it turns out I actually know the answer to that.

A few years ago I got into buying junkers from insurance auctions. I figure if I can’t fix and sell them, then selling the parts is better than the vehicles going into a crusher. Seems like it takes a lot of material to produce an automobile, and I can often find them with less than 100,000 miles on them. Sometimes I’m even lucky enough to find them in reasonable shape and with low miles. The best though is reasonable shape, low miles, and a low price. You never get all three though. If you get all three, something is probably wrong.

My first junker project was a 2012 Chevy Cruze. I have since learned that 2012 was probably the worst year for that model. The car had been in a minor fender bender, but was also leaking oil from several seals. I found out later what a nightmare the PCV system was on these cars, and that most of the blown gaskets were caused by that.

Turns out that with the Cruze and its LUV / LUZ engine, the PCV system is integrated into it’s plastic valve cover. I could- and did- get the valve cover, but the PCV tends to get clogged up and cause the same issue to reoccur. The fix, as I understand it, seems to actually be an aftermarket re-engineered PCV system. So I replaced the valve cover, camshaft cover seals, and PCV flex tube (upgraded.) I replaced the oil pressure sensor, which had really become more of an oil fountain. I replaced the turbo oil lines. I replaced the oil pan gasket and several other seals and you know what? That sucker still leaked a little bit.

I’d read these cars have issues with the cooling system, specifically that the overflow tank outlet breaks. So when I changed all the coolant hoses, I made sure to get the upgraded overflow tank with the metal inserts in the coolant hose outlet. When I did the work I wound up with an air bubble trapped somewhere inside the cooling system. I had read somewhere that you have to bleed the cooling system through the radiator’s petcock, so that’s what I’d done. I should really consider buying one of those coolant exchanger tools, but I’d never had this problem before now.

The car never got too hot throughout the process of putting coolant in it. It seemed fine when it got up to the proper temperature. It seemed fine when I drove it around the neighborhood a few times over the next few days. It even seemed fine when I took my wife and kids out for ice cream, which was a 20 minute drive one way. It didn’t seem so fine when we got back home though.

As I pulled into town I could smell the Dexcool. When I looked down at the guages, I noticed the needle was still pointing just below the 200 degree mark on the temperature gauge. That’s where it’s supposed to be; GM typically runs 195 degree thermostats in most of their vehicles. By now I’d made it home, and as I was pulling into the driveway I could hear Dexcool boiling under the hood. I took another look at the instrument cluster and sure enough: 195 degrees.

That’s when I remembered the fake coolant temperature gauge in the Camaro. I wondered again why the hell a company that builds cars would want to do something like that. 2012 was early in the Cruze’s American production run, so I guess I could believe they hadn’t gotten all the issues worked out yet. There’s really no excuse for the Camaro though, that thing had been in production for years by that point. I would’ve liked to have found a new engine but my wife had decided she was over the car by this point. I sold the thing to a recycler and cut my losses. Sometimes that’s what you have to do.