Ask an expert

Prior to getting my car service at an AA centre, I was topping up my water probably once a fortnight. When I took car in for service I notified the technician about this. I got the Gold service and they would looked into the issue. I was told to monitor the water temperature as they did the coolant thing.Straight after the servicing I experienced a couple of times that when I started the car it would start but alot of smoke would be coming out of exhaust and slow to move. During that period there wasn't any indication of over heating etc. I took it back to the AA centre and was told that the head gasket had blown. My question is could this have been picked up during servicing with their diagnostic scan and point 31 of the gold service. Did their servicing of the coolant add to this issue. Now they have quoted me with a $3200 repair job. Thoughts please, thank

Hi there,
The workshop may have pressure tested the cooling system in order to make sure you have no slow external leaks as the reason for you needing to top it up.
If no external leaks were found, then it would be possible for the leak to be internal ie, head gasket. The moment your vehicle starting needing to be topped up, the head gasket could have been on its way out, and now it is showing itself more. A diagnostic scan would not have picked this up, as it all happens deep inside your engine. Until it leaked more, it is a little hard to locate such a slow leak. It requires more in depth testing of the vehicle/ engine specifically looking for head gasket leaks/ problems.

Thanks - yes they pressure tested the cooling system and no external leaks were found so probably it leaked internally.