Sell
?
...but seriously, I may end up not keeping it forever so I better remember that you want it!
---------- Post added at 09:16 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:33 AM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dubyagee
Good cars. Chrysler quality. Stay ahead of oil leaks and youre good.
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Story time, boys and girls!
The old pre-Pentastar 3.5 suffers from a nasty design flaw. The thermostat is located at the inlet and requires a small bypass circuit to allow coolant to flow enough that hot coolant will reach the thermostat. Crisisler implemented it with a tiny passage cast or drilled into the block, I guess somewhere near the bottom (BTW, "somewhere near the bottom" also describes the blind, tight location where the thermostat housing is).
That's all well and good as long as the engine is run daily, maintenance is performed on schedule, and the engine doesn't have a zillion miles on it. Once that tiny passage clogs, the thermostat won't open and the engine will overheat uncontrollably.
Last Fall while fixing a leaky coolant hose I removed the thermostat and placed one inline inside the upper radiator hose, per a
thread found on a car forum. I forgot to drill a small hole in the thermostat since it will still need some bypass flow.
All winter it was mostly ok; occasionally it would start to overheat, but all I had to do was rev the engine way the hell up and that would thrash the coolant enough to get some hot stuff to the thermostat and open it, then the temperature would drop like a rock. One annoying thing about that workaround was that the engine is rev-limited in neutral to 4,000 RPM which usually wasn't enough, so I'd have to leave it in gear and floor it up to a speed that would do the job.
Anyway, winter passed, spring sprung, and I still didn't drill that bypass hole. With the warmer weather it was overheating more often. One unseasonably hot day it refused to cool down. I turned around and headed for home while I kept hammering on it trying to trigger that thermostat, to no avail.
After a while I got it cool enough to stop for a minute and check under the hood. I pulled the engine oil dipstick and it was totally dry! I had been flogging the everliving fuck out of that engine for a few miles with no oil and lots of overheating. I figured that was the end, but standing there roadside I refilled the oil (I had plenty in the trunk that I had just bought) and it immediately behaved - quiet, smooth, and cool.
I should have gone home and changed the oil immediately. That new oil was probably full of leftover sludge. Instead, I was worse than my usual lazy procrastinatory self; I went months and 11,000 miles before I changed it again (just a few weeks ago).
I haven't seen any evidence of engine oil leaks so it probably just burned/sludgified the oil during all that overheating. (It
does leak power steering fluid, at the steering gear/rack...why couldn't it be a hose?
)
I did at least remove that thermostat immediately...when the cool weather returns I'll put a thermostat in again, this time with a bypass hole drilled.
Some time between then and the recent oil change it started occasionally going "DING!" with a split-second flash of the oil pressure light on the dash, when it's been driven for a while (fully warmed up) and I come to a stop, especially on a hill. :derpcow:
So, I'm amazed that it still runs great every damn day. Plenty of power. Can't tell if it's smooth and quiet or not, however, due to an exhaust leak that's kind loud and, uhh....unsmooth? Vibraty? I half-ass welded it (at the rear joint of the drivers side cat) to take it from
insanely offensively loud down to merely
irritatingly loud. God forbid I buy $10 worth of exhaust pipe and clamps, much better to waste a pound of fluxcore welding wire and spend a whole weekend getting welding spatter injuries on hot shirtless days and not even fix it decently, amiright?!
