death of a Rendezvous - take 2

clean with the summer wheels

I thought the all wheel drive bits under a cavalier would be cool. More so if the Impala v8 bolts up.

this one is FWD, but best i can figure out the only thing stopping the IRS from being RWD is lack of a diff, axles, and rear hubs are different. my dad took the IRS out of mom's rolled one and built a trailer out of it. it even has the bolt holes for the AWD center section.

i want to v8 anything fwd with an ls4, however the ls4 in my garage belongs to oldopelguy.

Glad the wife is OK and good luck with the car situation.

I should keep in touch with you, patgizz. My mom has an '04 AWD Rendezvous and my wife has an '06 FWD Rendezvous, and unfortunately you seem to keep accumulating Rendezvous parts cars. But seriously folks, thank heavens your loved ones are safe.

The Rendezvous is a surprisingly useful vehicle: wide and tall, but a lot shorter than an Enclave/Traverse, so the girls find it easy to park. I wouldn't call it fun to drive, but it's comfortable and quiet, and handles much better than the GM vans with the beam rear axle. The '06 with the 3500 is much smoother than the 3400, and it feels a lot more powerful than the rated 15hp difference.

Not looking forward to replacing the rear plugs though. I bought one of those Thexton engine tilters off Amazon - hopefully that'll make the job easier.

i have new plugs and wires, they were in the back seat ready to go in... along with a trailer hitch, and we just found the roof rack cross bars at the junkyard and put them on. it just rolled 120k and we planned to drive it into the ground. hopefully state farm gets on the estimate process as i'm sure it's totalled, and i need the $ from them for a down payment on something else. my mom had $ in 6 days from her crash, but because the highway patrol needed an extra day to get to the tow yard and take pictures of the car, the whole process was delayed until saturday afternoon at which time they probably weren't going to even get to put eyes on it until sometime today.

looking south for vehicles again, everything up here sucks. 2005's with no rocker panels make me a sad panda.

Glad the accident damage was limited to the Buick.

For some reason when I saw this thread on the latest topics list today, I thought of the movie Rendevous and thought they made a sequel and someone died. Then, once I clicked on it, I remembered it was about a Buick and its crash worthiness. I'm still glad your wife came out the wreck ok.

If you go out of town lemme know i might need a clean DD

insurance called, $4800 in damage plus another $1000 tacked on for unseen potential damage totals it. it was right on the bubble, he said if he took into account my recepts for the new parts it was close to the "have to fix it" line, which i did not want to happen. i'd never trust it again and have to sell it for less than half as much as the total loss payout would be. copart offered them $911 so that's what i've agreed to buy it back for, and will do my best to make a few hundred bucks on it. already have the wheels and tires sold. as tempting as it is to try and build a $2015 car out of it, i don't think i'll have time even though i did off 2 projects this week.

Wally wrote: I thought the all wheel drive bits under a cavalier would be cool. More so if the Impala v8 bolts up.

The V8 will bolt right on up to a 4T60 although the starter will be problematic.

I strongly, strongly suspect that a Rendezvous/Aztec/Montana/etc front subframe will bolt right in to any A/X body. For some reason the only A-bodies that I ever see a Century wagons with wood trim. I take this as a sign from the Gods of Mechanical Mayhem that something should be done with this.