94 Caravan stick shift: long-term plans

I have one of those rare 94 stick shift minivans, which I love.
Since they don't make 'em anymore, I'd really like to keep this one
going as long as possible, since the body and interior are in
great shape for its age.

It has about 160K miles on it. It's leaking some oil via the
valve cover gasket, and perhaps the head gasket, too. But it
drives great and doesn't burn much oil considering its age.
It has a slow leak of the A/C coolant, but I get it charged
every year or two for $100.

I've had very little trouble with it otherwise. (other than
the current electrical problem I posted last night)

But I know the engine won't last forever and was wondering
what people would recommend about getting a new engine.
I'd probably also need a new clutch, and who knows what else.

I'd like to have some info. about new engines BEFORE it
breaks down. Anyone have any source of info? Prices,
labor estimates, other work that should be done concurrently?

Should I have a dealer do it?
Does a typical independent shop have enough experience
doing engine replacements, or should I take it to a
engine specialist?

 

Keep on truckin', then.

When the time comes, have the engine rebuilt by a reputable and capable
engine machine shop. This involves a little more inconvenience than buying
a "remanufactured" engine off the shelf, but the end result is virtually
always much better. Rebuilding an engine is a relatively major
undertaking; for the amount of money it costs and for the long duration
over which I'll have to live with the outcome, I will not relinquish the
opportunity to talk with the machinists doing the work, specify certain
brands or types of parts, etc. for the sake of not having to rent a car
for a week.

It would make a great deal of sense to replace the clutch while the
engine's out, yes.

It is very unlikely that it will "break down" in the manner you seem to be
imagining (all of a sudden go "kerBANG!" and stop running). Oil and fuel
consumption will increase, performance will decrease, noise will
increase...you normally get quite a bit of warning (months to years'
worth) before the engine is too whipped to carry on.

Shop carefully. Many "engine specialists" are no more than parts swappers
who throw in "remanufactured" engines.

 

I have done this with my 1984 Chevrolet Celebrity station
wagon. Why did I do that with one of -these- cars? Well I
will have to plead stupidity, but I will say the car has about 40K
on the rebuilt engine and is still running strong, so I guess I
will be driving it for another decade. ;-)

If I had your van I wouldn't think twice about doing an engine
swap. In fact I would almost kill to get my hands on one of
those vans with a good body on it. Believe me I have looked
hard for one where I live and they just aren't available. That
is one of the very few kinds of vehicles that I would actually
consider buying brand new. Anyway, enough of that.

Here is my story with my Celebrity, I hope you enjoy it and
I am sure you will draw some conclusions from it.

I bought my wagon for
$400 and it had 130K miles on it. At least the seller claimed that,
but I am pretty sure now that it actually had 230K miles on it,
the problem is that the odometer only reads to 5 places so there
is no way to tell. I had wanted to get about 2 years out of it.

About 6 months/6K miles after I bought it, the engine started
knocking badly like someone was hammering on it with a ball peen
hammer. Well it was a $400 car, so what do you expect.

I first thought I would just get a wrecking yard engine. I've
done a couple engine swaps before so that didn't bother me.
However when I called around none of the yards had my
engine except for what they called "rebuildable cores"
so that was pretty much out.

I considered abandoning it, but by then I had put another
$400 into it for miscellaneous bullshit stuff that was broken
and needed to be fixed, and I just couldn't bring myself to
walk away from $800 that I just just spent over the
previous 4 months. Plus that, laugh as you may, a station
wagon actually is perfect for someone who most of the
time needs a sedan for commuting, but probably about
6-8 times a month is hauling moderately sized objects
around that are too delicate to be put in an exposed
bed of a pickup. (ie: electronic equipment) Also,
more importantly, the transmission had been rebuilt
around the 100K mark, and the body of the wagon
was straight.

I called around to several engine rebuild shops and they all
told me that the 2.8L v6 chevy engines of that vintage all
had oil problems - the factory did not make the drilled oil
passages large enough, and they all fail with bottom ends
that are oil starved. Several shops in fact once I told them
what kind of engine it was, even before I told them what
was wrong they said "oh you must have a bad rod bearing"
And they all said that the rebuilt ones have redrilled
oil passages in the rods.

When I was calling shops I asked them specifically if they
rebuilt the engines or send them out. Most of them did
in fact send out the short block and many sent out the
entire engine. The few that did their own total rebuilds
quoted about $1500 higher than the shops that sent them
out. None of the shops that sent them out would tell me
who they used as a rebuilder/remanufacturer, as you might
expect.

So then I decided to start calling around
to rebuild houses. There are not many here and I went and visited
them all. I ended up using Jones Auto Engines, the URL is
here:

http://www.jonesautoengines.com/

To be perfectly honest I did not select them based on any
technical criteria. I selected them based on my experience
in going down and actually talking to the people there and
looking at the facility. You see, Jones is an engine remanufacturer
who mainly wholesales to mechanics that R&R engines. Even
though I was not having them do the R&R on the engine, if a
problem happens with the engine later on, they are ultimately
who is responsible. If the remanufacturer does not stand
behind their work, then you are stuck trying to get the mechanic
that put it in to eat the costs of repair or replacement, and that
is not going to be easy. To put it simply, after talking with the
people there I was satisfied that they would, in fact, do what
they say they would do.

Originally my thought was to buy the engine itself from Jones and
install it. It is, of course, much easier if your doing an engine
swap to have the new one sitting right there so as you remove
pieces from the old one you can transfer them over. The problem
though was first that they didn't have a 2.8L already built and
in stock. So they would have to use my core, or at least
try to use it assuming it was rebuildable. Jones assured me that
if it wasn't rebuildable, they would have little trouble getting one
that was. More importantly, their warranty if you pay a mechanic
to install one of their engines is much longer than if you do it yourself.
-very- much longer.

So, I had them refer me to a local mechanic in the city and I
basically walked into that person's shop, told them I was referred
by Jones, and asked them if they could do the job for $2500
or close to it. As I knew by then what most other shops would
charge, and knew pretty much how much the shop would have to
pay for the engine from Jones, and knew what the labor time would roughly
be, I knew pretty much what to negotiate from. The total bill came
to $2800 and I was satisfied with the costs and the line items on the
bill.

Since that job was done about 4 years ago, the following engine-related
issues have come up:

1) The day I picked up the car I drove it for about 15 minutes on the
highway and the oil light started coming on at idle once the car
warmed up. I immediately drove it back to the shop and they replaced
the oil pump. A new oil pump, supplied by Jones as a matter of fact,
had been installed in the engine when the new engine was put in, but
obviously it was bad. That was of course warranty work. Say what you want
about cheap oil pumps, but I think it's pretty obvious that of anybody,
an engine rebuilder has an incredibly high interest in making sure that
the oil pump works right. So I really don't think that the supplied oil
pump was a cheap POS, I think it was just one of those things.

2) About 6 months later I noticed oil consumption rising and it leaking
oil, I took it back to the shop. Warranty work again, bad pan gasket.
Probably they screwed the pan gasket up when changing the oil pump,
the shop owner said as much.

3) When the car was next up for emissions testing it did not pass, high
NoX. A new EGR valve didn't help. I dug into it further and discovered
the egr passages cast into the intake manifold were plugged solid with
carbon. I had to hammer a long wood drill bit into the passages to
break up the carbon plugs. (fortunately I had a spare manifold to
experiment with to see exactly what the right angle for the bit needed
to be)

I blame the shop for this one, even though it wasn't directly related,
because since they had the manifold off (a new manifold isn't included
in the rebuilt engine) they should have checked to see that the EGR passages
were clear. Fortunately, it was a pretty cheap fix, I didn't have to
unbolt the manifold and deal with putting a new set of gaskets on and
retorquing it, and arguably it needed a new EGR valve anyway.

4) About 2 years later the engine started running very rough at half
open throttle, the problem I finally figured out was a broken-off viton
tip on the carburetor selonoid. New selonoid fixed this. (fortunately the
broken tip hadn't got sucked further into the carb passages)

The R&R shop had actually strongly recommended that I replace the
carb. I overruled this due to the expense ($400 for a rebuilt carb)
In hindsight I realized I made the right decision, because GM produced
dozens and dozens of variations on this carb for those years, it would
have been a miracle for a rebuild house to have supplied the exact
carb for this engine and vehicle. If the carb ever gets rebuilt it will
have to
come off and take a trip to a carb shop.

Anyway, in my case I am not really sure what you would classify
what I did as. What I basically did was have an engine remanufacturing
facility rebuild my engine. So I guess you can classify it either as a
rebuilt
engine, or a remanufactured engine, depending on your point of view.

Granted, I did not get the opportunity to specify brands or types of
parts. However, in exchange for that I got a 5 year/50,000 mile
warranty on my engine from a company that so far has, in fact, had
2 opportunities to back up the warranty and both times they have
done so. All they require you to do is change oil at the 3000 mile mark,
and I do so religiously.

Ultimately what I ended up with is a vehicle that cost me $3600 and
had a 30Kmile rebuilt transmission, and a 5 year/50K mile warranty
on a rebuilt engine. It was a lot more than what I had planned on paying,
but it wasn't a bad deal at all. And it was a lot better than walking
away from $800 + a lot of my time invested already. So, maybe I
won't get to drive the car I was planning to drive for a few more years
yet - but at least I'm not stuck in a Prius.

I would guess that by the time your engine is ready to be rebuilt,
that your transmission will be ready to be rebuilt too. Or at least,
opened up and inspected for wear. You should do both of them.

Well, if I were you I would worry about all that once your van's
engine goes. I think it will surprise you, I think that if you keep oil
in it it will last a lot longer than you think.

But if and when you do get it redone, here are some things I learned
from my story:

1) The resulting vehicle is in some ways equivalent to a new vehicle.
From a reliability standpoint it is, certainly. Unfortunately, we find
that Kelly Blue Book and the local insurance companies do not
hold this point of view. Thus, for the sake of example, suppose
the times comes and you dump $4K into a rebuilt engine, and $2K
into a rebuilt transmission, into a vehicle that otherwise has a book
value of $500 when running. Your going to end up with a vehicle
that has a -replacement- value of perhaps $12,000 or maybe more.
In other words, it would cost you at least that to go to the market and
purchase a low-mileage vehicle that had a market equivalency of yours.

If you are carrying comprehensive insurance and you paste this
van into a tree by accident, your going to take a loss. Sure you can
argue that the vehicle is worth $12,000. Your insurance company
will not hold this view - they will (if your very lucky) grudgenly
admit that perhaps it's worth is $6500 but most likely less. And they
probably won't even admit that unless you run out and have the van
appraised the day after it comes out of the rebuilders shop.

And, how many people carry comprehensive on that old of a
vehicle?

Before you spend a dime on a rebuild, you really need to have
a conversation with your insurance agent. And you probably need
to expect to pay for comprehensive on it, for at least a while.

2) Resale value of such vehicles is next to nothing. For starters,
these kinds of warranties are usually not transferable, so the buyer
isn't going to pay extra for a warranty. Secondly, the burden
of proof would be on you to convince the buyer that the rebuild
job was done well and the van is going to last for a good long
time. And that will be nearly impossible. So, you better be planning
on keeping this.

3) Even though your humming along happily with your van with
the rebuilt power train, the rest of the world isn't. Which means
that every year that you prolong the life of this van with a rebuilt
power train, there are fewer and fewer of these vans on the road,
fewer and fewer of them in wrecking yards, and fewer and fewer
places selling spare parts for them.

I've seen this first hand with my '68 Torino. 20 years ago when I
bought it, there were still a fair number of 68 Fairlane/Torinos in
wrecking yards and I could scrounge parts for it fairly cheaply.

Today the only reason that parts are still available is that it's a
"60's muscle car" and so has value, people still have stocks of
these parts in their basements. But, the 'normal' channels for
parts - wreckers, Ford, the aftermarket - have either dried up
completely or are extremely limited. It's either swap meets,
Hemmings, or Ebay - and all those places are horribly expensive
to get parts for that vehicle for.

And, it's even worse with my '81 Datsun 210. THAT car has
NEVER become a classic and never will - and body parts for
it are increasingly harder to find. It's at the point now where I
can call every wrecker in the book and maybe one will have one
of these cars in their inventory, and they will be located way
out in the sticks where land is cheap and they can afford to
sit on a vehicle forever. But of course, the part I really want
someone else will have got already. And even the aftermarket
now has stopped selling body parts for it, and engine parts
are getting very expensive.

Anyway, sorry this was so long. Hopefully it will have given
you some things to think about. I did learn a lot about going
this way, and I would definitely do it again - given the right
vehicle - and in fact I -am- doing it again with my '94 T&C
with the transmission. But, that's another story.

Ted

 

Thanks for that. It was an interesting read.
I was aware of the insurance. I think my agent said that I would
need to bring in the repair bill after I got the work done, and they
would reappraise it.

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