307's sucking prestone like an alcoholic at an office party. wheeee. I'm getting that unique odd sensation you only get when having a blown head gasket is a good thing.

 

hahaaha, sounds like a plan a brewin.

 

Well, when the choices are head gasket, or water jacket ... blown head gasket is by far what you want to hear ... but then, I said from the start than if this block needed rebuilt, it would find a 350 replacing it. Unfortunately it's too eff'n cold to even consider working on it already, so it looks like I need to find a new mode of transportation for the time being.

 

Here's the problem, if it has water going into the cylinders then you will have a rusty problem come spring. Have you isolated it to a side? If your going to go to a 350 and not reusing the 307, then no problem.

 

Haven't touched it yet. Wind chill is -17F here ... and you know what the F stands for. Just touching my wrench set to take it inside was painful.

 

You need a garage.

 

It's on my list. The wagon was never intended to be driven this winter, but I've lacked the free time to finish work on either of my two other options ... A '93 grand caravan with tranny issues, and an 85 parisienne with lace brake lines. Temp is supposed to zoom all the way up just shy of 40f by friday ... I'll have to take a day off and try and get those brake lines finished up and installed.

 

Naw, both you guys got it wrong. You need a new 350 to replace that wheezing 307 asphalt ripping monster.. Why fix a dead horse or put in another dead horse when you could have the stallion under the hood?

 

That was always on the books ...I just need to make sure the old horse is actually terminal and didn't just throw a shoe. Then I need to find a good 350 ... and somewhere to work on it that doesn't involve hypothermia. Who knows ... there might be a 4-oh-my-garsh-3 lurking unrecognized just waiting for some love. I need to bone up on my diamond in the rough recognition skills.

 

Should be plenty of 403s in the boneyard waiting for a new home. Just remember it's still a small block. This past summer though I could have pulled a Caddy 500 if I knew you wanted a real motor.

 

Maybe someone close can let you use their garage.

 

The Venn diagram of people who like me enough to let me use their garage and people who actually have a garage looks like a pair of breasts. Allan ... up until this morning, I wasn't in the market. Who knows ... I might not be.

 

x2

Definitely not the time of year you want to be doing to much outside. I saw someone the other day doing a brake job on their car in the driveway when it was 25F. Hope you can find a garage to do what you need to do.

 

Professur, I don't know the extent of the
tranny problem in your mini-van, but you may
try a quart of Trans-X if it is a shifting problem.
Just make sure you drain a quart out first.
Couldn't hurt and may get you back on the road
for a while untill it warms up some.

 

The chrysler trannies were famously bad because the factory manual listed the wrong fluid and that was usually catastrophic .. i know that's not the case here. This was the first electronically controlled trans, and they're frequently misdiagnosed as needing a rebuild when the problem is failed wiring. Wiring (grounds) that are often fixed as part of an unnecessary rebuild. Prior to parking it, it went to limp mode hand in hand with warming up. Cold, she'd get me to work .. but much further and she'd lock into second. But at the last, it felt like it was slipping instead of limping. I'll try her out tomorrow, she's spent long enough without a battery than any bad learning is long gone. If I can get her into the loading dock at work I can give the electrics a quick once over in the warm. Can't be there often or for long tho. Definitely can't try pulling heads or swapping engines.

 

Well Drats.
I guess ignorance is bliss, I didn't know that
about the wiring. We went through 3 of them
toting the kids around for years. Started with
a gutlass 86 4 cyl. drove the wheels off it, wouldn't
hold the driver side drive axel without leaking all the
fluid out. still running with about 200K on it.
Went to a 90 model Ply. Voyager 3 ltr. Drove the crap
out of that one too. Kids in highschool with the last one,
95 Grand Caravan 3.3 ltr. Traded it in just a few years ago
for a 02 Tahoe, one a/c compressor, water pump and idler.
About 180K on it as well. Must be all the snow, slush, Canadian
weather that plays hell on the daily drivers up there.

 

Well, the Caravan played nice and got me to work yesterday .. but 50 feet into going home decided she liked the office parking lot better than her own slot, so she spent the night there. This morning I broke down and spent a few christmas dollars on the e-manual for the '93 caravan. 82 meg download ... Seems pretty fair for a factory manual ... diagnostics aren't quite as good as you'd find in the Olds manuals tho ... lots of "attach the DRB II (factory computer diagnostic tool)" .. but the wiring diagrams look complete at first glance.

 

Sadly this is the trend in CSMs. As an example, I have Chevy truck service manuals from the 1950s to 1999. The 1952 manual is about 1" thick, lavishly illustrated with photographs, and describes the theory behind each system to help you understand how it works and thus diagnose problems. This is pretty much how Olds CSMs from the 1960s and 70s are written. My 1973 Chevy truck CSM starts to get away from photos to line drawings with less detail. My 1980s manuals have almost no photos and few line drawings. The operations theory sections are also smaller. My 1999 Chevy truck CSM is SIX volumes with exactly ZERO photos and the most useless (and often incorrect) clipart illustrations. There is at most a paragraph on theory in each section, major typos, and mainly just flowcharts of mindless parts replacing. Invariably, each flowchart has a step that says "replace ECU with known good unit an retest".

I did break down and buy a used OTC Genysis test unit, which replicates the functions of the GM Tech2, so I can perform the tests described in the manual.

 

Got my first chance to look it over. Nothing apparent in the oil. The refilled rad was nearly empty again without the car having been started ... so I looked underneath for a rad leak .. nope. Big hole in the snow further back tho. Didn't have time to get it up on the ramps, but looking about with an inspection mirror .... I think it might be a freeze plug. I'll try and get her up on the ramps tonight (another evening out with the family) and get a better look ... but I'll take a rotten freeze plug any day. On another note, I found a guy who's had a 350 for sale since before Halloween. I might just grab that for the shed.

 

I never did finish this up. I found that it was dripping from where the heater hose enters the firewall. It was too damn cold to fix it right so I chucked a bottle of Gold Eagle No Leak into it in the hope it would plug it up enough to get me to the warmer weather. Stuff is pretty much just crushed black pepper in suspension. Well, damned if it didn't do a fantastic job. Plugged that leak good. So good in fact, that fixing the damn thing properly went straight outta my head.


Until today of course. Today it's minus a bazillion (celsius or Fahrenheit, doesn't matter which) and guess what decided to remind me of it's presence. Not much point of tossing another bottle of pepper in there, ya think? I'm hoping it's only the end of the hose is cracked and not the nipple Anyone know off hand what the hose measurement is?