Anything with splash lubrication and babbit bearings.
Biggest POS engine
- Thread starter LouDawg
- Start date
- Status
Which was the last American car to use splash lubrication and babbitt bearings? 1952 Chevy is the latest that I'm aware of. Does GM get the engine prize again?
Lean burn system
My worst was a 2.6 Mitsubishi I bought new in 86. Needed a valve job @ 35K. Rings were so bad I had to pour oil in the carb to get it to start. Crank broke @ 45K.
I have a customer with 400K on hers. Never had much go wrong. 1 new water pump and 3-4 radiators. She follows oversize trucks for a living and the rads get holes knocked in them from rocks.
Oh wait! She just had the trans rebuilt but it made 395K.
I think this was also the Mazda 626 if I'm correct. My father-in-law had one. What a #@$%! festival that was. He passed it down when my wife graduated college. We bought my current 2001 Civic about 2 months later.
I've been lucky; I haven't had any direct experience with bad engines, including a couple types that have been mentioned. My girlfriend's 2.0L in her '93 MX-6 is still running strong at 125K miles. My Iron Duke 2.5L had good torque and gave me no problems from 120K miles, when I bought it, to 200K miles, when it died in an accident.
Boy, she's lucky. I had bad everything.. problematic engine, transfer case, transmission, seals.. you name it.
2.5L Iron duke in a 88 S15. Never could get it to run right. Sold it with 150k and the guy is still driving it after 5 years.. must of been my imagination.
Good lord! That sounds like how my car ran...if it had 50 hp, I'd eat your hat.
I had a 1980 Capri RS, which was pretty much a mustang with a different grill and hatch. The 2.3 liter turbo was a piece of bovine excrement. Blown rings, hosed turbo, burned a quart of oil per day.
Noticeably absent are any of the old AMC masterpieces (excluding Jeep)...anyone have any good stories about them...hmmmm?
Probably came from the factory like that.
Hmmmm... I always thought it was kind of neat to have a Carburetor Equiped V-8 with a
non-OD transmission that weighed 4,000 lb and stil knocked down 29-31 mpg highway.
Of course we never had any problems with our three 1977 - 1986 models.
I thought the passenger cars used the engine through 1954.
The 1953 Corvette of course got the modified Blue Flame version of the Stovebolt ie bearings and oil pump.
I almost gave up on my 1988 S-10 with the 2.5 also. Had a cold idle problem and slight hesitation. Took it to a little Chevy dealer in Crozier, VA (little one horse town west of Richmond) and the mechanic there was the best I have ever seen. He put a new injector in it and that was the last time it ever was in the shop.
The Ford 2.9 and then the 4.0 that was based on it were all prone to cracked heads. They were hit and miss as far as longevity. If you got lucky they could last a long time, but if anything ever happens and they get overheated you better be prepared to replace both heads.
I vote the Ford 3.8L as one of the worst engines as they had the head gasket problems from the 1980's up to 1996. The head gasket wouldn't just seep slowly on the outside like some engines, they would either leak coolant internally, blow out internally causing a misfire, or blow all your coolant out at once with no warning like my parents van did. The 96 and up versions didn't have the head gasket problem but they had intake gaskets that would leak, sometimes enough to hydrolock a cylinder and bend a rock, break a piston, etc. This problem also applied to the 4.2 V6 in the newer Ford trucks that was based on the 3.8
I vote the Ford 3.8L as one of the worst engines as they had the head gasket problems from the 1980's up to 1996. The head gasket wouldn't just seep slowly on the outside like some engines, they would either leak coolant internally, blow out internally causing a misfire, or blow all your coolant out at once with no warning like my parents van did. The 96 and up versions didn't have the head gasket problem but they had intake gaskets that would leak, sometimes enough to hydrolock a cylinder and bend a rock, break a piston, etc. This problem also applied to the 4.2 V6 in the newer Ford trucks that was based on the 3.8
I am very surprised that no one has mentioned two Cadillac engines: the infamous 4-6-8 V-8 gas engine, and the diesel engine converted from a Chevy 350 block. Those owners must have some interesting tales to tell.
That engine got pressure lube in all cars 1953. The 1952 engines in Powerslide equipped cars also had pressure lube IIRC. The same basic engine was used until about 1962.
This is one of the best engines around. The guy must have got a lemon. I have seen several of them with over 250K on the tickers.
- Status
Similar threads
