Hello from California. 2011 Cruze eco auto 25k miles.

gharo said:

Greetings,

The car has been okay so far, the water pump has been replaced along with the tires (v-rated now). When the heater is on I can smell coolant my wife cannot. I keep getting solicitations in the mail from attorneys that want to sue GM for building a car with a lot of complaints, trans, stalling and the water pump. My wife is not interested in suing anyone. It's her car so whatever.

I'm a big guy and I have a tough time getting in and out of the car so I drive my car as often as possible (2000 Buick Park Avenue Ultra 165K miles).

I would like to change the shift points to a higher rpm range and lower the car along with making some mod changes but I do not know if she would go for that.

Best regards,

Gil

Click to expand...

Welcome to the forum!

As for the solicitations, that is extremely interesting, did you fill anything out somewhere, or did you randomly get notices? If you can smell the coolant take a check at the reservoir, and if the coolant is still at the max line, then you're smelling the grease used around the HVAC system, and all you need to do is take it in to your dealer and have them change it out for a different grease [More info about the coolant smell can be found here: AST V.2].

As for the shift points, get the trifecta tune and talk to Vince about tweaking them them to your liking. As for lowering your Eco, your best route is to go with coilovers, although if you don't want to drop ~$1K on a set, I would recommend Eibach lowering springs. If you're looking for performance, I would say get the K&N drop in filter and do the resonator delete for a cheap, but decent gain. Anything else, just ask around, there are plenty of routes to go with your Eco modding wise, and theres always at least one active person who specializes in different areas.

Also, its nice to see more bay area Cruze's on the forum, we need more.

Welcome to Cruzetalk. I would second getting a Trifecta tune. If you wife won't use premium, get the Trifecta Budget tune as it will work on regular unleaded. The standard Trifecta tune requires premium gasoline.

Quick summary of the cabin odor:

If you have the odor in the engine bay, the source of the problem is most likely the water pump or a bad surge tank/cap seal, but it may be anywhere in the cooling system. Have your dealership put in the coolant dye and keep driving it. It can take over 1000 miles for a slow coolant leak to evaporate enough coolant for enough dye to dry on the car at the leak point.

If you have no odor in the engine bay, you need to know what the smell in the cabin actually is. If it's coolant the problem is either the cabin engine heater core or the HVAC ducting. In this case if you smell it regardless of the HVAC settings I would check the cabin heater core, unless you have no engine coolant loss. You can sniff around the bottom of the front footwells for coolant smell. However, if the problem occurs only when you're using the heater, regardless of fan speed, the most likely culprit in this case is the HVAC ducting lubricant and you need to get your dealer to do the repair specified in PI-0935. If the smell in the cabin is more like dirty socks, you have mold and/or mildew in the HVAC system. This smell will occur any time the blower is on and at any engine temperature and HVAC temperature setting, with or without the A/C on. GM has a kit to clean mold and mildew out of the HVAC.