Q – My Boxster had been slowly losing coolant for a couple months and every once and a while, I just added a cup or so but now it went down over the weekend and I couldn’t see where it was going. I took it in to a local shop and they told me it was the reservoir and estimated an astronomical price for the part and the labor. I am stunned! I had a reservoir replaced on my Audi A-6 and it cost me less than $200.00. What makes these so tough? – Kevin
A – Kevin, my sympathies and I am sorry to say, it is probably worse than you know. When I have been involved in these repairs, it is always an adventure and rarely goes well. The problem is where the bottle is located and how it was installed. The reservoir was mounted to the body before the powertrain and so, the easiest way to remove it…is to remove the powertrain first!! Now that’s absurd so what you are left with is multiple hoses grouped tightly together and clamped with spring clamps that you cannot get a straight shot at. The pliers alone to compress the clamps will set you back $100.00 on the Snap-On truck.
So lets say you manage to compress and sneak the clamps down the hoses and you naively think the hose will slide right off…WRONG! The hoses are baked on! When hot coolant has circulated about ten years or so through the hoses, the easiest way for removal (again absurd) is to cut them off. I can see that sometimes that might even be cheaper.
Here is the “worst” part. The plastic tank is made of a similar material as some of the other hoses, pipes, and flanges in that system. So don’t be surprised if other parts break in the process of working around the area. When the chemists and engineers designed these cost and weight saving pieces, they did their best to quality test the materials and design in the R & D lab on dyno test stands. They test run engines 24 yours a day for weeks and months trying to make sure that their computer derived components would stand the test of time. Unfortunately… they never test them in the world we live in, where these things have to last for years.
There is an elf somewhere in Bavaria who decided to make water pump impellers out of plastic to save a few pennies per unit. He sold the idea to BMW, VW and Porsche. Now he is laughing his butt off, enjoying his retirement (you know he is related to that other elf who has the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that no one can ever find…) while those of us who bought the product would love to tell him how much we appreciate a water pump that will randomly fail, usually on the hottest day just after a high RPM romp on the freeway. Heaven help him if we ever find him and heaven help you if you don’t notice the gauge or the red light in time.
Of course there is another side to the story here. Those of us in the auto repair business would like to thank him for the thousands of hours of “job security” that he designed into a product that was doomed to fail. So with one kid in college and another one soon to follow, Thanks! – MC