In reply to Gunchsta :
Upper mostly, though a bit of gasket matching on the lowers helps as well! I ise a dremel, carbide bits, and now flap wheels thanks to the advice of oldskewltoy.
Same with a bigger throttle body, and freeing up the intake tubing and filter.
Sinister performance did mail order tubes for me and wvumtnbker and were both happy with the result and price.
Wot tech may still make bigger cams, but thats a rather extreme move in the case for this car.
Headers are definitely worthwhile if available.
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
Awesome, thanks. I was thinking of doing some kind of cheapo cold air intake thing, so I'll add some light porting to the list as well.
This is going to be fun!
As long as we're here let's backtrack a bit. I got this car from an 18 year old girl who I believe was experiencing her first Craigslist car sale experience as a part of her getting a new car. This one had been handed down from her grandma to her sister to her or something like that, and it seemed like she had been given a new car and was selling this one as a life lesson. Which I appreciate!
Anyhow, I was looking for these crap can fwd GM cars for there utter durability (interesting considering where we are now) and ubiquitousness. I had been daily driving the Mercury for the spring because my temporary company vehicle was no longer in my possession. This one was cleaner than some of the other sub-$2000 junk I'd been looking at and a deal was struck. $1240 because it needed 4 tires something horrible and the muffler was rusting off.
I payed the young woman and my dad and I immediately went and got fried chicken and ate it in the new ride. Here's a picture from that parking lot.
After this we drove next door to advance auto and put some windshield wiper blades on in the parking lot so I could see to get home.
All of this feels very stereotypical of crap can fwd GM lifestyle and made me giggle. These cars are usually driven by people who do not love them, and they seem to do a great job of carrying people from A to B, even with little to no regular maintenance.
Something about this turd felt very comfortable right away, like an old pair of jeans. The drivers seat is pretty flat from 140,000 miles of use, there are cigarette burns here and there, it has crank windows and blown speakers. It's just rad. Oh, and it had like the loudest valve train and piston slap ever. Pay no mind.
Oh and as long as you're still reading my romanic recollection of how I came to own this fine specimen of GM engineering I may as well tell you the positives of my purchase.
Everything works, cruise, AC, all of those goodies. Minimal rust, 140,000 miles, decent interior and only one major dent.
So a theory my dad and I judge our car purchases by is if they "owe us anything" - ie; have I gotten $1200 of use and enjoyment out of this car? Yes. In my mind if I were to throw this car away today for $0 I would have gotten my money's worth. Another unscientific metric I've come up with (initially started by a new bicycle purchase) is miles per dollar. So, my new bicycle was $1500 so I vowed to ride it 1500 miles that year, making it a dollar a mile, likely cheaper transportation than most other ways.
This car has definitely already carried me more than 1200 miles so again, it's earned its keep.
If none of this makes sense to you that probably means you're a sane person and I congratulate you.
What else can we share here.
I just put a new water pump on the 3.1 so I'll transfer that over to the 3.4, I did new injector o-rings (probably because I mistreated them when doing intake gaskets), I put a new battery in the car trying to diagnose a "theft light" issue, and I welded some fresh steel in around the rusty gas door. I have some pictures of that process.
The finished product, with eBay color matched rattle can, is decent at best. I think if you have any talent for bodywork you'll spot it from a mile away, but it's all the same color and it's all steel now so I'll take it. It's fun to practice bodywork on historically unimportant cars. Cheap education!
Add another variable in your expenses as time spent, an put a dollar value to your time. You could engine swap it, for not that much money. Unless you're rebuilding the engine, you have no idea how long it's going to last. Even after you swap the engine, you get to find out if the transmission is usable. Factor the time for swapping both of those. After all of that, you have arguably one of the least reliable, and least desirable cars ever made. You were overly kind by buying it for 1200$ and getting your use out of it.
my vote is scrap.
In reply to lnlogauge :
Awkward 
I already ordered an engine.
I look at the time as continuing education, my time isn't free but this type of work is something I enjoy (generally speaking) and outside of going back to school there are only so many reasonable opportunities to learn and tackle a new challenge in this way. So, for less than the cost of one credit at a technical school I get to put an engine in this car on my own time and hopefully get another year or so out of it. So, the time spent is factored in and to me it is a positive, not a negative.
Gunchsta said:
In reply to lnlogauge :
Awkward I already ordered an engine.
I look at the time as continuing education, my time isn't free but this type of work is something I enjoy (generally speaking) and outside of going back to school there are only so many reasonable opportunities to learn and tackle a new challenge in this way. So, for less than the cost of one credit at a technical school I get to put an engine in this car on my own time and hopefully get another year or so out of it. So, the time spent is factored in and to me it is a positive, not a negative.
It looks like you'll be into this for about $1000, give or take. Where can you find a decent beater for that kind of money? It's kind of like the devil you know. Plus, the education value. I say go for it, it's better than a car payment.
In reply to Dirtydog (Forum Supporter) :
Yup, I spent a couple days looking on Craigslist and it seems like $3500 is the going rate for anything half decent right now, so I think I'm still in good shape.
At the end of the day I bought the car assuming I'd be the one sending it to the junkyard, and I'm fine with that I guess I just want to have some more fun with it before I do that.
In reply to Gunchsta :
completely missed your post on buying the motor, didnt mean to be a complete dick with your project there :D
thats the best way of looking at it. I completely left the knowledge part out of my equation. you're absolutely right.
In reply to lnlogauge :
No offense taken at all! This is probably the least desirable car ever made. Which, because I'm a a maniac makes me want to keep it alive longer.
Gunchsta said:
So a theory my dad and I judge our car purchases by is if they "owe us anything" - ie; have I gotten $1200 of use and enjoyment out of this car? Yes. In my mind if I were to throw this car away today for $0 I would have gotten my money's worth. Another unscientific metric I've come up with (initially started by a new bicycle purchase) is miles per dollar. So, my new bicycle was $1500 so I vowed to ride it 1500 miles that year, making it a dollar a mile, likely cheaper transportation than most other ways.
This car has definitely already carried me more than 1200 miles so again, it's earned its keep.
If none of this makes sense to you that probably means you're a sane person and I congratulate you.
That's how I judge my car purchases too. I have an OBS GMT 400 because I don't do enough truck things to justify dropping 40-50K on an newer rig. I "rescued" my Infiniti G20 from my Niece's backyard and used a $250 engine off Craigslist to get it back running again. I've probably got about $1500-2000 over the past 5 years in it at this point, but it doesn't owe me anything as I would have made many thousands more than that in car payments and it's been fairly reliable. I thought it's transmission was going out last summer as it started slipping, turns out all it needed was a service (new filter and fresh fluid) and it was right as rain. I think it's worth putting a grand in it to keep it going, especially in this market. No way you are replacing that for anywhere close to $1K.
Just got a call from the carrier- the motor is supposed to be here this Wednesday or Thursday, so we're making forward progress already!
Motor is here!
It's a little crustier than I hoped but it should be fine. Worst thing I've seen so far is it appears that the cam sensor (a guess) has been removed from the block leaving a small hole for moisture and water to get in, so that's not super awesome. The throttle body didn't want to move at first but that got freed up quickly.
I did pull the plugs quick and they all looked pretty nice so that's a good start.
Hopefully after some clean up it'll be a decent little unit.
Inching closer! I dragged the new engine into the front of the garage and started some disassembly. This one appears to have some kind of egr tubes coming out of the head that were of course mangled, so I think I'm going to try and cap or otherwise plug those.
A bit of encouragement to start- most if not all of the bolts holding the heat shields onto the exhaust manifolds came free and didn't break, so I'm taking that as a good sign.
I really would like to get the new motor on a stand and clean it real well and paint it, but it's February in Minnesota so I'm not sure how easy it will be to clean or paint given the temperature.
At the moment there's no rush though so I might try and take my time. It would be really nice to have it all clean and tidy. I'd love to roll the car out and really scrub the trans and engine bay too. It's all a matter of patience at this point.
Made some more headway this weekend, kinda letting the project take shape as it goes.
The 3400 is up off the floor and on a stand. This is big because obviously it's nicer having it off the ground, and it's much more mobile this way. We're supposed to get like a foot of snow in the next couple days and the Malibu is currently blocking the snow blower, and the engine on the pallet was blocking the space the Malibu needed to move into to get to the snowblower. So, now that part is solved.
With the engine on the stand I was able to tear into it a bit more and assess what I have.
that's an injector seal that fell onto a valve. Was able to get it out, but as you can see this engine probably wasn't maintained very well. If at all.
Sludge buggy
It's looking like my alleged 80,000 mile motor probably had 1-2 oil changes in that 80,000 miles.
Which, I really shouldn't be surprised by. This came out of a Buick Rendezvous SUV, not a car somebody meticulously maintains. Some differences I've noticed so far between the two engines - the 3400 has some stainless EGR tubing with ports directly out of the heads, the 3100 does not. The 3400 has a little sandwich plate oil cooler, the 3100 does not. I think I can cap or otherwise plug the EGR ports on the heads and possibly run the 3100 style EGR. I'll probably keep the oil cooler because why not, but that entails using the coolant crossover hardline from the 3400 which was badly stuck into the front cover and got damaged in the removal process. The 3400 throttle body has a steel plate to connect the throttle cable and cruise cable, the 3100 has a plastic one. When I start tearing the old motor out of the car I'll compare how the cables attach and see which throttle body I'm going to use. I think the 3400 has a slightly bigger throttle body so it would be a shame not to use it, but I'm also not looking to reinvent the wheel for a couple horsepower.
I'm still hopeful we can save this thing.
Aw man, that's a bummer to see all that sludge. How far are you from U-Pull-R-Parts? At least when you buy an engine there, you can pull a valve cover first and have an idea of what you're getting.
I wouldn't bother with the oil cooler. We ran a 3400 without one in LeMons and it was fine.
In reply to obsolete :
I'm pretty close to U-pull, I ordered this one from eBay with the claims of "good runner, 80,000 miles". In hindsight I may have been better off going to U-pull. The sludge is mostly just a disappointment, I suspect it'll be fine. Or, it wont. Time will tell!
Thanks for the note on the oil cooler. Skipping it would simplify things.
Slight thread derail - any details on the bike peeking into this shot?
In reply to Racingsnake :
That's my 1975 Kawasaki KZ400.
Given the overall sludgy condition of the engine I approached the eBay seller and just said hey, this thing looks a little more worn out than represented in the listing, anything you can do for me? Not expecting much but figuring it didn't hurt to ask and I was pretty disappointed. They didn't bat an eye and gave me a decent credit back!
So, I now have a less expensive, still kinda sludgy, supposedly 89,000 mile 3400 and a couple extra bucks in the budget for gaskets and putty knifes :) . I'm very pleased that the seller worked with me and didn't expect that level of business ethics from a used part seller. Kudos to them.
Beyond that some research on Rock Auto is telling me that most (if not all) of the sensors and accessories are interchangeable from the two engines, so that should mean I can use the known good sensors from the 3100 for the 3400.
I've not known these engines to eat head gaskets, but given I had one fail in the 3100 I'm wondering if I should put fresh ones in the 3400? Now would certainly be the time to do it.
Stay tuned to see how far down the fwd 60 degree v6 rabbit hole we go!
I'm glad to see this happen, and kinda wish I had fixed the rust on mine before it took out the trunk floor.
