Swapped engines in my wife's Grand Caravan

[The_Eric]

I posted a while back about timing chains for this van - didn't COO without buying, ended up buying both to return the one I didn't want to use. I WAS planning on doing some work on the engine in a little bit - radiator hoses, timing chain to replace the sloppy, noisy Cloyes and some other odds and ends. Well fate intervened and the van picked up a misfire on cold starts. A little investigation and an exhaust gas chemical test confirmed what I feared - that a head gasket was bad. I added some Bars Leaks pellets to the coolant and immediately switched to prepping to tear it down and send the heads out and buy some gaskets when it hit me that it may be cheaper and better to replace the engine given that it head 225k miles on it already. As luck would have it, I found a 3.3 with 120k for $650 delivered to my door - it was a no brainer.. I did replace all gaskets and seals with the one exception of the head gasket, mostly with Victor Reinz products. I pressure washed the engine and used aluminum cleaner where applicable. Of course since I had a timing chain, a new INA (a reboxed made in the US SA Gear unit) chain went in to replace the floppy factory one. The engine looked pretty good inside and mostly likely had regular oil changes - hopefully it gives many years/miles of good service.


Here the new bullet is just after getting the timing chain installed and a close up of the stylized SA that SA Gear uses

A couple of pics of the bottom end just prior to getting the oil pan installed

The oil pan freshly blasted and coated in POR 15

The valve train looks pretty good - just after this pic I hooked up a healthy Bosch drill and 3/8" drive socket adapter and spun the engine over via the crank bolt until I had oil coming out of the rocker shafts. At that speed it was making about 45psi

Here it is all ready to be dropped in

Fast forward to last weekend I had the old engine hanging from the hoist in less than 3 hours - she was still warm from the drive in.

 

[Number_35]

Nice work! (And a great price on the replacement.)

Our 2007 Grand Caravan, also with the 3.3, is just coming up on 290,000 km (180,000 miles). If it goes until 225,000 miles like yours, I'm sure it will outlast the van (which is getting rusty).

At this point the engine and transmission seem to be in perfect condition.

P. S. The EGR valve on your old engine looks new. I replaced ours last August. (But I see yours is on the back. I think that was a later upgrade. Is your van an early 5th-gen (2008 - 2010, pre-Pentastar)?

 

[The_Eric]

I had the new engine in and about 1/2 hooked up that day. My wife was getting sore from a hard day of supervising so went quit and went home. The next day the power was out for a couple of hours at the shop so that slowed me down a bit, but otherwise it went quite well.

Here it is at the end of the first day

And all hooked up

The first start and road test went well - fired up just like it always belonged there and had no codes.

On the trip back home my wife calls and said the engine light was on - told her if it's running fine, just keep on going. When I got home I scanned it and found an EGR low flow code. Pooh. I had kicked around the idea of swapping on the EGR valve from the old engine prior to dropping it in as it had been replaced not terribly long ago. I told her it was fine for a day and that I'd take care of it later. The next day I brought home the newer one, but I was having a nagging thought - I had put a plug in the port prior to washing and cleaning and now I was wondering if I had taken it out???? Well sure enough I didn't

There was also a P0344 in there too, so I may end up swapping the old cam sensor out.. I cleared the codes and did a cam/crank relearn on it so wel'll see how it goes...


Here she is after pulling in from the road test after learning the cam/crank and fixing the EGR

 

[The_Jeff]

Incredible! I don't see many of these getting engine swaps, their owners aren't that enthusiastic. Wonder if taxi companies are the exception.

Question: New oil pans are $26 on Rockauto, why not just get that instead of refurbishing an old one?

 

[Exhaustgases]

Nice, the only bad thing about that engine is those plastic valve covers. Compared to the junk nowadays it looks great.

 

[The_Eric]

Nice work! (And a great price on the replacement.)

Our 2007 Grand Caravan, also with the 3.3, is just coming up on 290,000 km (180,000 miles). If it goes until 225,000 miles like yours, I'm sure it will outlast the van (which is getting rusty).

At this point the engine and transmission seem to be in perfect condition.

P. S. The EGR valve on your old engine looks new. I replaced ours last August. (But I see yours is on the back. I think that was a later upgrade. Is your van an early 5th-gen (2008 - 2010, pre-Pentastar)?

Yeah I kept it just in case this one goes bad.

Her van is a 2009, so... the second(?) year of that body? Frankly, I'm glad that it's not newer with a 3.6. I do wish that it was a 3.8 w/ the 6spd though, they're a lot more lively than this thing is.

 

[The_Eric]

Incredible! I don't see many of these getting engine swaps, their owners aren't that enthusiastic. Wonder if taxi companies are the exception.

Question: New oil pans are $26 on Rockauto, why not just get that instead of refurbishing an old one?

Yeah I got the van from my uncle's estate. Physically it was in great shape but the mice skanked it up pretty bad. Luckily they didn't damage anything, so we ripped it apart down to the bare shell top to bottom and front to back and pressure washed everything! That left us with a mechanically sound van after I obsessed over it for a while. It showing some rust now and she dusted a coyote with it so there is some damage to the bumper cover but it still soldiers on.

To me it just makes sense to replace the engine instead of the whole vehicle... The van is still plenty serviceable and it's cheaper than buying another. In fact, every vehicle in my fleet has had some major transplant. My 3V F150 got an engine and transfer case that I rebuilt, as well as a rebuilt rear diff. The Buick got a newer, lower miles 3.8 and now the van got an engine too. Previously I've built or replaced engines, for most of our cars. I buy solid vehicles cheap with problems, fix them and drive them until it's not feasible or something better comes along.