3800 Buddy's car ...what do you think ?

[burtgtp1973]

loooong story shortened .. 98 Park Ave (NA) 3800 average miles . has a bad lower intake gasket .. how he discoverd this was he was driving a short distance from his house , and when he pulled into the drive way the car was missing and sputtering .. so he shuts it off , then tries to restart it ... all he hears is click click . on the 3rd try it turned over 2 revolutions and blew out a puff of what he thought was white smoke .. ( tinted windows )

so he gets it to the shop not knowing the exact problem .. they pull out # 2 # 3 plugs and they are fouled and try to turn over the motor blows some water out of the holes . after that the starter was clicking again .. anyways .. they ended up saying it was indeed the lower intake gasket that blew apart ...

so they they fix it today and he drove it literally 1 block to the gas station and was getting ready to leave the station when it did the SAME EXACT THING . started missing and white puffs of smoke ...had to have it towed back to the shop and they said the gasket BLEW apart AGAIN . and from him trying to turn the engine over it cracked the housing on the starter too . ( which he had JUST replaced today because of the same problem )

so what would cause this lower intake gasket to be blowing apart like this ? TWICE at that ... something has to be underlying to be causing this to happen ... has anyone ever experienced this kind of issue ? is there any possibilities that the head gasket would or could cause this ? my freind says the car NEVER EVER overheated since he has owned it ... i told him i would post up on here and see what kind of ideas peeps had .. we are all quite baffled as to what is going on with his 3800 .

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[GTPPWR]

bad workmanship the second time. thats what I am thinking.

the first time it blew.I dont know. any aftermarket parts?

 

[smknL67]

actually thats a very common problem on n/a 97 and up 3800 engines, at the shop where I used to work we would get about 3 cars per week with the same problem. Now heres the problem ; the plenum is made out of plastic and with time it blows the gasket and when it does it starts mixing the oil and anti freeze, when it does it throws that famous white smoke. and well as it mixes it throws so much antifreeze into the oil that it makes it hard for the starter to spin the crank that eventually it cracks the housing of the starter. WE would always just go ahead and replace the engine when the gaskets would go out, and finding a good engine in Robbins Junk yard was a pita main reason cause most of the engines there had the same problem..

Now with your friends car he didn't realize that he had been mixing for a while and I don't know how bad he messed up his internals but from what you posted he'll just keep blowin gaskets cause his engine is shot....he needs to replace the whole godawm thing....sorry.....he'll be able to put another gasket and get away with it for a lil bit but time will tell how long.

 

[imported_Theautoguy]

Now, I've read that it's a bad lower intake. I'm sure other will chime in here but the lower intakes seem to have a big aftermarket due to this issue, hell, they're all over E-bay. I would like to think that one wouldn't have to replace the whole engine if just the intake failed. Unless, of course, it does have antifreeze in the oil and has been driven for a great deal of time.