Perhaps Regals have a different intercooler design that's not as susceptible to pooling (assuming that's the root cause of these engine failures).
Question: is there driving style that can prevent and/or remedy the pooling? Would a hard run help suck it all through at a rate that won't hurt the engine? Or does hard running make it worse by increasing blow-by?
Good point you bring up. To date we haven't seen any Regals, but we rarely work on them, but there could be a less efficient intercooler so less is condensing. As far as driving, that is hard to say. If driven hard always, it may push through smaller amounts of this "gunk" mix so less chance of hydro-lock, but if there is already a good amount accumulated in the intercooler like were seeing, then a sudden hard acceleration into boost suddenly will push a "gulp" of this into the intake manifold and thus the cylinders.
What we have seen in every case of failure, is no signs of detonation, and this is in the pictures posted and the engines we have tore down, every single failure has been the ringlands broken downward from the liquid ingested, and generally the pistons that fill first from the intake air charge (the liquid fill's these first as well). GM can keep replacing engines, but until this issue is addressed at the source, this will continue.
I would like to plug into some more techs working on these and share what to look for as far as removing charge pipe and inserting boroscope in to inspect the amount of accumulation, and inspect accumulation in bottom of intake manifold.
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Another simple band-aid would be to drill a small hole in the lowest part of the intercooler end caps (the plastic portion) and that will force the liquid out when running in boost....but that is a really ghetto way of doing it.
