repair cars

Chevy Volt Coolant Leak Repair (take 2)

by Dan Hankewycz
Read Time: 2 mins

Almost 1 year ago, I helped my dad fix a coolant leak on his Chevy Volt. The aluminum housing was cracked, and we used JB Weld to repair it. It turns out JB Weld doesn’t like hot coolant! The coolant seems to eat the JB Weld and turn it into a gummy sludge that ultimately made the gasket fail again.

Previous Repair Failure

Here are some photos showing the original JB Weld repair we did, and how how it failed.

original repair from 1 year ago Failure! You can see how there's this orange goop left behind where the JB Weld used to be. The hot engine coolant seems to have eaten it.

Repair (take 2)

Seems like it’s now impossible to find replacement housing, so we had to come up with a better repair solution. We decided to skip the epoxy and repair the housing with just a thicker piece of aluminum (the aluminum coke can wasn’t enough last time). The gasket was pretty snug with the aluminum piece installed. We used a razer blade and cut some of the gasket to make it slightly thinner where the aluminum piece is. Hopefully this repair will be the last…

Cut, bent, and installed a small piece of aluminum. The gasket was still good, but we did need to make it thinner since the aluminum piece is taking up more room now.

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