Sooooo my ECL came on today and there's a puddle (about 2 cups) of liquid on the floor of my garage (pinkish orange) so I'm pretty sure that somethings gonna wrong with the coolant system.

Anyway, I had my car in the shop ~250 miles ago to have head gaskets replaced, and I'm bringing it back to the same shop. Should I request they check/replace the oil to make sure everything is good with the new gasket and no coolant is getting into the oil? Or is that overkill/paranoia?

 

Hope that maybe an air bubble in the system is your issue.
Look at your oil on the dip stick for mixing.

 

Hopefully you just have a small coolant leak somewhere. Can you see where the fluid is leaking from?

What does the ECL say? Any fault codes or is it just the low coolant warning message and red light?

If I had this problem I'd take the car back to the garage to get them to check it out, because if this is a leak caused by the head gasket replacement then that should not happen after just 250 miles of use.

 

In order to replace the head gaskets, a lot of the ancillaries have to be removed. This includes a lot of plastic tubes, pipes used for conveying coolant. In addition there is the header tank and the thermostat housing - all plastic. Over time these plastic parts get brittle especially at joints, so whilst dismantling/replacing, the mechanics may have stressed one of these parts and put a crack in it. Under hot coolant pressure the coolant drips out. I had to replace a coolant rail that ran at the front of my first X350, a 3 litre V6. Just a little bit of seepage which eventually threw a "Low Coolant" alarm. This was swapped out and during removal, the part cracked completely open. The header tank small pipe nipple was also found partially cracked so a new tank was needed too. A bit expensive, but cheaper than ignoring until it all lets go on the highway, and you wreck the engine !!

 

Turned out this was exactly the case... A tube from the tank to the header had gotten brittle and cracked... $200 to replace. Got off easy this time I guess

 

Great news. Glad it was something straight forward.

 

+1