What's hot? Cars that last

Wall Street Journal

The lousy economy is making planned obsolescence obsolete in the car
business.

The auto industry is geared up to sell you a new car every four or five
years -- a legacy of General Motors Corp.'s realization early last century
that cars could be marketed as status symbols and fashion accessories. That
insight helped GM end the reign of Henry Ford's utilitarian and durable
Model T, and turbocharged America's post-World War II consumer culture.

Now, rattled by economic hard times, many Americans are heading back Henry
Ford's way...

Continued:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123784792463318543.html

 

Apparently, back to Ford as well

 

This survey was apparently on cars three years old, and the improvements
have some
definite value.

The surveys that were made with cars three months off the lot are all but
worthless.

I heard an interview with Rick Wagoner the other day and it is clear he
still doesnt
have a clue. Lutz can and does speak with a straight tongue, and I believe
people
like him can help build trust in the products again, if he walks the walk.

Wagoner needs to get a job doing something he is good at.

 

JD Power has publicly stated that the Initial Quality numbers track very
against Vehicle Durability Study numbers three years down the road. That's
quite a bit better than "worthless".

Derek

 

No, it isnt.. It is damn near worthless. If you buy something NEW you expect
it to perform.
Three months is nothing.

After 3-4 years or better, the value of the product begins to become
obvious.

GM has sucked in the past ( see Lutz admissons) about putting out a pretty
product that wasnt worth a shit.

You can buy anything you want.

And if GM reliability becomes accepted, then you might want to buy some GM
product. At this pont,
I wouldnt consider ANY GM product.

Maybe in the future, if there is one for Wagoner and his pimps, but not now.

 

Since they make money by selling those numbers I'm not surprised they
claim they are both wonderful.

 

You can't make a blanket statement like that with GM. For the past, oh,
at least 15 years, GM has had some *very* reliable and enjoyable
vehicles sold right alongside some clunkers. Most of the midsize/small
front drives powered by the 60-degree v6 family are crap. Most of the
larger front-drives (particularly Buick models) are excellent, as are
all the Northstar powered vehicles. I wouldn't hesitate to buy a
Cadillac (except that they've been butt-ugly for the last 5 years or
more), a G8, or a GM truck or full-size SUV right now. But a Cobalt or
G6 or similar? Screw that!

 

Everyone I know who has owned big Caddies in the last ten years has
bailed in the last 4 or 5. Nothing but trouble - one thing after
another - that the dealers cannot seam to solve. Might be OK for a
year or two - but one friend had SEVEN Cadzillas in 5 years. Most
spent more time in the dealer's garage than his. He's driving Lexus
now and happer than a pig in you-know-what.

 

I hate to disagree as I LOVE Cadillacs but you are off base on this
one. The NorthStar engines have huge head gasket problems and are
failing at an alarming rate. The head bolt threads in the block fail
and the bolts pull out. You are looking at a 3 to 4k dollar repair
when (not if) this happens. Book time is somewhere around 25 hours.
Supposedly the situation is much improved in 2003 and newer models.

Buicks are somewhat better overall but they have had a big problem
with the egr pipe warping the plastic intake manifold allowing coolant
to leak in to the engine. This one is supposedly fixed after the 2k
model though I still hear a number of complaints on the issue.

Steve B.

 

According to most dealers the Northstar is NOT field rebuildable. And
the head bolts are also the girdle bolts - to remove the heads the pan
needs to come off if what I've been told by a guy I know who used to
maintain a fleet of limos is true. NO local engine rebuilder will
tough them with a 10 ft pole either

The EGR/plastic manifold problem is easily fixable and almost a
non-issue after Series 2. But the 3800 still had issues, and the 3400
replacement? is a timebomb. Like the Northstar it's not a question of
IF, but WHEN.

 

25 hours? I'm trying to imagine how this is possible -- how are the
threads repaired? I can't imagine doing heli-coils would take
anywhere near this long.

 

They are a complex engine jammed tightly into a cramped hood.
Extremely difficult to work on. I was mistaken. the bolts to not go
down to the bearing girdle - but they DO pull out tlike the headbolts
on the Magnesium block VW pancakes (1500 and 1600 "suitcase" engines
in particular) and the same type of "TymeSert" threaded bushing needs
to be installed. I believe ARP has a different solutionusing larger
head bolts as well. The originals IIRC are 11mm - a non-standard
thread.

 

That's still pretty wild. I'm not familiar with the VW engine, so
that description doesn't help much; a nonstandard thread might help
explain the price, but not the 25 hours.

 

The top engine and intake area seem to be a problem for GM designers. I
just helped my wifes's aunt find a replacement for her Oldsmobile - '94
IIRC - in which the plastic intake sprung an internal leak (maybe the
EGR situation mentioned earlier?), and I just a month ago had to replace
the intake gasket on my wife's '99 Century. An '88 Cadillac I had
developed a pinhole leak in the intake-to-head mating surface. And on
top of that, GM bought into the DexCool™/Prestone Extended Life™
disaster. It should be a clue that they put coolant system leak sealer
in at the factory on many of their engines.

I've been driving and owning many brands of vehicles for over 40 years,
and have *never* once had anything but a GM have that type of problem in
those areas, so it's not a matter of my doing something wrong or not
maintaining them. Like I said - intake coolant porting and gasketing
seems to be a very weak area for GM design.

 

I have no problem imagining it the way everything has to be so
integrated on modern cars for compactness and weight - between consumer
and government demands and regulations, to even hope to be competitive,
the manufacturers have to cram 30 pounds of crap into the proverbial 5
pound bag. The consumer and the governments have gotten what they asked
for/demanded along with all of the unintended consequences that create
maintenance nightmares and multiple thousand dollar routine maintenance
issues for the consumer. Welcome to the modern world.

 

The Northstar has been around for 17-odd years now, and I'm not going to
deny it's had a share of quirks (block porosity allowing it to leak
fluids right *through* the metal being one of the most, um,
"interesting" problems). IIRC GM's grand plan was for the Northstar to
become the one corporate engine line, and its early problems probably
are what helped kill that idea. As for "no local engine rebuilder will
touch them," that's probably somewhat true. Local engine rebuilders are
all but *gone* except for supporting local racers and guys like me who
restore their 40+ year old vehicles. With pretty much any thin-sleeved
aluminum block engine, a complete rebuild is not cost-effective compared
to getting a new or assembly-line rebuilt short block.

But back to the Northstar- the vast majority of them just *work* and
work extremely well for years and hundreds of thousands of miles. When
you do have to work on them, its a royal pain in some ways, but that's
what you get when you make a 300+ horsepower lightweight v8 that can fit
in a compact FWD vehicle. Packaging sucks- the starter is under the
intake manifold, for example. We're not ever going back to the days of
the Cadillac 472 where you could sit on the fender, reach down into its
bowels and fix something while munching on a sandwich. Cadillac engines
have had pretty complex and annoying service procedures since the 80s,
but if you *follow* the published procedures instead of ASSuming that
since a procedure worked on a Chrysler 318 its going to be the same on a
Northstar, you can certainly maintain them just fine.

If you've ever tried to work on any Japanese car, you know that its the
same story there. WORSE, in fact- at least GM doesn't put the PCV valve
under the intake manifold like Toyota has done in the past! Pretty much
the same for any modern vehicle- they just aren't built for simplicity
of service anymore.

 

Yes, the whole comment pretty much fails the sanity check test. Of
course so does the fact that I, whose very blood cells are shaped like
little Chrysler pentastars, am defending GM.

Where's the guy who went by "VioletLightning" when you need him to
comment on Northstar service procedures? I guess he might still respond
if this were in .tech, but I actually haven't seen a post from him in a
long time.

 

The majority of the book time is because you can't do the job with
the engine in the car and you can't pull the engine from the top...
you have to drop the entire cradle out the bottom. Here's a step by
step guide http://cadillacforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3090

If you want to learn more about the problem visit
http://www.cadillacforums.com/forums/northstar-performance-technical-discussion/

There are a couple of really good NorthStar "stickys" at the top with
a great discussion of the problem complete with pictures.

Perhaps I see them a bit more since I live in the land of the Blue
Hairs but the pick and pull is overrun with these cars down here.

Steve B.

 

Particularly revealing to me was the survey of gasket/bolt failures at:

http://tinyurl.com/cz3p6m

Which clearly reveals that there was a rash of failures between 1997 and
1999, trailing off with none reported in their survey after MY 2003 (and
only 2 in 2003).

Granted the sample size is small, but that's an AWFULLY clear trend!

 

25 hours is CONSERVATIVE. You've gotta have a few under your belt to
make flat rate on them - and most dealer techs don't want to do them
because it takes MORE than they get paid for flat rate.