Junkyard survey of 3.0L Mitsubishi

I took a walk through the local U-Pick-It junkyard yesterday morning looking
for something for my Intrepid, and since there's nothing finer than a
junkyard even on a crisp(!) Saturday morning, I spent a couple hours walking
around. This particular yard was biased heavily towards domestic cars and
minivans, not too many light trucks or SUVs (and only one LH, sadly...)
There were a lot of late-80s early 90s mopars, many with the 3.0L V6.

I found myself looking at every 3.0L vehicle I spotted, checking mileage. I
was really surprised to find that many of them were well over 150K miles,
and a few topped 200K miles. There were at least two dozen that I looked
at. Some of the wrecks had lower miles, of course, but the ones that
clearly had just gotten too expensive to repair had made some pretty decent
mileage figures. Quite a few were missing their transmissions, so I guess
that those were still okay, or had been rebuilt prior to the engine giving
out.

So it's good to see that many are getting decent longevity out of what has
been kind of a crappy motor for us to maintain with its oil leaks, etc.

I guess the other thing that impressed me (and this was true 12 or 13 years
ago when I was a junkyard rat) is that it's strange what people leave in
their cars. Cars that weren't wrecked -- so you know the owner likely
didn't die at the same time the car did -- with strange things like loads of
laundry in the trunk, kids toys in the back seat. One of the high-mileage
minivans with the morning WSJ still sitting on the passenger seat. Many
cars with still-valid license plates. What are people thinking when they
let their cars go? Ok, sometimes when the car quits on the way to work you
don't bother to get everything out of it when the towtruck comes. But to
just say, ah, the heck with it, so what if the laundry was in the car?
Weird. Maybe more of these cases were deaths than was apparent.

Anyway, it's an interesting perspective on the life and death of these
machines that we sometimes put so much of ourselves, not to mention our
income, into -- to see where they end up. I recommend it.

--Geoff

 

I went to the junkyard for parts and found a Haynes manual for my car in the
back seat.

 

I hope you left it there! ;-)

--Geoff

 

I have a Haynes manual for my Chevy pickup ... and also a manual from
the factory. The junkyard is the right place for the Haynes manual.


Matt

 

I have 96k miles on my 3.0 88 New Yorker. Still waiting for these oil
problems everyone talks about.

Maybe it's the Mobil 1 ?

 

What a lot of these are is refugees from the tow lot. Typical scenario is
the
poor single mom with kids scrapes together $400 and buys a minivan that
has about 2 years of life left in it, then drives the crap out of the
thing. A year later she parks in a no-parking zone and when the meter maid
finds the van there's about 10 unpaid parking tickets on the thing, so off
it goes to
the tow lot, and if there's the weeks laundry is in there, so be it. She
isn't going to
waste time paying the bus fare and the 3 hours of time to go out to the tow
lot
and pay double the van's worth to get it out of hock, she will just go buy
another
van. So 2 months later the tow lot finally has got the title forfited over
to them and
gets their $100 by having the wrecking yard take it.

Ted

 

My '91 Acclaim's leaving plenty of evidence of its existence on the
driveway right now just from 6 years of oil leaks, much less the head
gasket going. Just waiting for the funds to build up so I can repair
the poor thing.

That said, the mileage figures don't surprise me - I'm over 150,000
miles. Aside from a transmission, new head gasket, and radiator work
in its past, the engine hasn't let me down yet, even in the nasty
winter temps we were having last winter in New England. It's why I'm
waiting to repair the present faults because the whole car is in such
great shape I'm not willing to part with it just to inherit another
used car's woes.

- D

 

All the Mobil 1 in the world won't help that .problem ;-)
Larry

 

Thankfully that doesn't work in NYC. If your car gets towed, you can't
register another car until you pay the tickets, towing fees, storage fees,
and potentially disposal fees. So if you have crappy car, your best bet
to get rid of it is to drive it to the junkyard, not just park it and expect
others to tow is away for you.

 

The 3.0 is a cockroach. It has almost no redeeming features, smokes like
the Queen Elizabeth the first time they fired her boilers, and is gutless.

But it will not die, either.