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I thought I'd posted what happened to my car in here but I can't find the post. Prolly got deleted.
Anyhoo, over the past year I'd noticed a few drops of coolant and oil on the garage floor in the morning. Knowing that leaks only get worse if you ignore them, I took my car into the dealer to have it checked last month. Apparantly both are somewhat common maladies with the V6.
The coolant leak usually stems from the cast aluminum plate (called an oil cooler cover) that covers the valley between the cylinder heads. With an OHV engine this area would be the lifter valley but on the DOHC 3.0L, its a coolant passage. A corner of the plate leaks just enough to cause a few drops. Its a remove and replace procedure that seems to be a permanent fix.
The oil cooler issue is totally separate but is related to the coolant leak in that the oil cooler sits in the valley between the cylinder heads, bathed in coolant. The cause of the oil cooler leak is usually an o-ring in one of the inlet/outlet pipes of the cooler. Again, not a major catastrophe but something that needs to be fixed eventually before the o-ring fails completely.
I learned both by talking to the tech who did the work on my car. I went to the dealer to see my car and they had the whole fuel injection system disassembled to get to the plate. The heads and the rest of the engine is not touched so its not really a "disassemble the entire engine" job. My tech told me it was straightforward stuff that takes a couple of hours to remove and repair. They'll replace the coolant but should not need to touch the oil.
I guess the upshot of all this is once these issues are fixed, you should not experience them again. Now, when the CEL comes on and its tracked to a catalytic converter failure, and the dealer replaces 2/3 of your exhaust system to fix it, you will have all the V6 problems taken care of. All you'll need is to replace the cam belt every 60K and you're engine should be perfect.
posted by 24.98.68...
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