My wife 06 Lucerne has the Northstar engine and 125,000 miles. I have heard that this engine has been known to blow head gaskets after 100,000 miles. This car isn't driven aggressively, mostly by my wife. What are the chances of the bolts failing causing the head gaskets to blow? The car is like brand new inside and out and if this is a probability, I will start looking for a crate Northstar engine.

 

I have seen Northstar engines with the bolts pulling out of the heads on some car video. There is a kit to fix it. Seems to be somewhat common failure. Kit looked easy to install.

 

I would not worry about this unless it did happen. But the Northstar engines are prone to oil usage. This I am sure of. Guess thats why they come with an 8 qt oil pan...

 

I realize that was somewhat tongue in cheek, but the real reason why N* motor used eight quart oil pans was because they were designed to have a limp home mode in case you lost coolant. The ECU actually disabled certain cylinders and used them as air pumps to help in air cooling the motor. The extra volume of oil and oil cooler were used to keep the engine from melting down.

 

If you have to do head gaskets you will probably be doing thread inserts upon reassembly. Usually a few strip out when retorquing, I would do inserts on all head gasket jobs when I worked in the Cadiliac dealer.

 

Never uses a drop of oil between changes, every 3000 miles religiously. did have some leaks, but my mechanic stopped them when I had the water pump replaced at 110,000. Has been a great car. But GM always has a better idea, like dropping Olds, Pontiac, and dropped the Lucerne line in Buick.

 

My wife has an 05 SRX and a 04 Deville. Both have used Mobil1 Synthetic since new and the both like to drink oil. No leaks.