Lost a rod bearing

[cowboy_tech]

I just discovered a very low mileage 6.2 to swap into my Alpha. Gonna borrow the Camaro it's in while the owner is traveling out of town for work. Should be an easy swap and they probably won't notice the difference .

Brilliant [emoji2]

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[alrock]

I just discovered a very low mileage 6.2 to swap into my Alpha. Gonna borrow the Camaro it's in while the owner is traveling out of town for work. Should be an easy swap and they probably won't notice the difference .

Well, they are putting 4 cylinder engines into the 2016 Camaros. I'm sure Jeri's car could be a donor. Musical chairs for engines?

 

[rsc]

If you are planning on topping it off before taking it in, only top it off to the add line. The guys looking at it will look at your oil level, and a full oil level and a broke motor always looks suspect. Also, if you ran it low and burned up the bearings then the oil is probably already cooked good. That stinky sludge would be easily noticeable too.

 

[JPaul]

Dropped the keys off this afternoon. I'm less than ecstatic with the service writer, hopefully the tech's are a bit sharper. They are going to do some preliminary diagnostics (which I am guess will mean checking the codes, checking the oil, which might just be checking the oil level and/or draining it, and possibly starting it up) and then talk to the warranty company and then go from there. Hopefully I'll know something before the end of the week.

On a positive note, I bought an original Game Boy last Thursday for $5 because he said the screen wasn't working at all, and ended up easily fixing the screen. Picked up a couple games to test it with on my way to the dealer and tried them out last night. Totally works, so there's that. Just needs a new screen lens (bezel) which is a few bucks off Ebay.

 

[JPaul]

Well, I talked with the guy from the dealer a little bit ago, they finished up their preliminary diagnostics and talked with the warranty company.

The dealer noticed the oil was low an added oil until it was full. It took them 3 quarts to fill it up. So with the quart I added on the side of the road, that means the engine had burned 4 quarts of oil since last November. Something had to have been seriously wrong with that engine to burn that much oil. Unfortunately though, it'd be really expensive to figure out what it is. The dealer said they could pull the oil pan and remove some of the rod caps to check the bearings, but honestly I know that won't help my case at all, since the issue with burning oil is going to either be excessively worn piston rings, or something mucked up in the head itself. Just pulling the oil pan and checking the bottom end would run around $500. I'm sure pulling the engine out and tearing it down would run into the thousands, and I question whether or not they'd be able to find anything.

I don't have maintenance records because I have only changed the oil once and I don't keep receipts. So that is going against me. But even if I did, they'd still point out that it was 4 quarts low (3 if you go with just what the dealer had to put in) and that everything is indicative of neglect/poor maintenance. Which they would be mostly right, as I should have been in the habit of checking my oil level. I used to be good at that, but have gotten lazy over the years.

They also found a few codes for the exhaust something or other that are associated with low oil levels/pressure. He didn't know when those codes were set though, he's going to talk to the tech to see if that is something they can find out, or if the codes are ones that don't have a record of when they were set.


At the end of all this though, I think the warranty company is going to end up denying it. I'd have to have the engine completely torn apart and them find something incredibly obvious as to why it lost so much oil (since they did note that there was no external leakage present) in order to get them to cover it. But the risk of them still not finding anything and then leaving me with a massive labor bill from the dealer is too great for me to want to risk. So unless I can show those codes were set long ago, I'm looking at replacing the engine myself. Hopefully I'll hear back about the codes in a little bit here.


Yay.

 

[JPaul]

So I started pricing out parts and engines and whatnot, and swapping in a V8 is not looking very feasible at the moment. An engine would run me around $2,000-$3,000, then I'd want to rebuild it, so at least another $500. Accessories and wiring and everything would be another $2500 or so, then the transmission would be another $1000 or so, plus exhaust at another $1000 plus. I'd be looking at around $7,000 or so to do the swap, and with my luck it'd end up costing even more. That's way more than I have time or money available right now. It'd be a lot cheaper if I could source a totaled Alpha, but I haven't been able to find any around here of course.

So i think I may just end up pulling the 3.7 out, tearing it apart to see if it's rebuild-able or not, and then either rebuilding it or getting another 3.7 to put back in and calling it good, then when I finish paying off my credit cards in a couple years I'll just sell this H3 and get an Alpha.

 

[4speedfunk]

Frankly I wouldn't even mess with fixing it. Just go buy a used 3.7L out of a Colorado/Canyon and swap it out. That is going to be the cheapest, quickest, least amount of drama fix.

 

[JPaul]

Depending on how bad the crank and rod are, that's probably going to be my course of action. The crank for the 5 cylinder is NOT cheap ($450 or so for a new one!!). Plus I am questioning what kind of condition my head is in, as it'd either be worn rings or something worn in the head that'd cause it to lose 4 quarts of oil in 6K miles. I'm planning on getting it back up to my house, pulling the engine out, and tearing it apart to try and figure out what happened, then go from there.

But getting a lower mileage used engine is probably going to be what I end up doing. We'll see what happens.

 

[chaos254]

I hate extended warranties. Majority of them are scams. Pay out thousands of dollars and when something goes wrong they deny the claim

 

[JPaul]

Yeah, I probably won't bother next time. I only figure'd it'd help if the engine died or something. Which it probably would have if I had been taking the H3 somewhere to get the oil changed and could prove it. But even then it might have been a stretch to get them to cover it.

 

[CaseyS]

That's strange to burn that much oil. To me you would have seen a smoky exhaust for that much. Just out of curiosity have you pulled the valve cover yet. My I5 had two cam journals back off at 180K. Toasted the head and was running with a knock but I still managed to drive 150 miles home on it. That sucks that you have an opportunity to upgrade but without time to plan for it, its not feasible. I put a new head on when that happened because as much as I wanted to yank the engine, I was not ready yet. Cost me $3500 between parts, labor and a rental car for a month. Put another 80K on it before it gave out for good.

 

[JPaul]

No leaks, no oil smell. One of the guys from work mentioned he never saw or smelled oil burning and he's driven behind me several times.

The H3 is still an hour away from home, I'll probably rent a trailer and tow it home sometime this week and then I can start digging into it.

 

[woodwardsh3]

I found a new gm crate motor complete 3.7 on line new an it was like 3600.00
When you changed the oil did you know it took 6 quarts.

 

[JPaul]

Pretty sure I did. Most engine's I've dealt with in the last ten years have taken 5+ quarts, so I always buy a 5 quart jug and one or two extra quarts.

 

[chaos254]

Is the extended warranty through GM? I would start making a list of services you've done to the H3 with dates and then when they ask for records you can provide them that. Even if you don't have receipts saved.

 

[JPaul]

It's a 3rd party company. I talked to the warranty company directly today and I'm going to see if I can get Walmart to print out a copy of my receipts since I know the day I bought the oil from them and still have that old credit card, so I think they should be able to do it. They were able to do something similar for my wife when she needed a receipt for some school expenses (she teaches 3rd grade). They sounded a little more open to the possibility of covering the repair than the service writer did, particularly when I told him that the engine had somehow burned 4 quarts in 6 months of driving. So we'll see what happens. I'm not going to give up just yet on getting them to cover it now after talking with them.

 

[MSC]

I had an 2004 Colorado 3.5 that I gave to my son, it has over 235,000 miles on it. It spun the #1 rod bearing because the front seal went out and it pumped all of the oil out of it. We put it on my lift and pulled the transmission out and dropped the oil pan, pulled the rod and main caps off and had the crank turned. We put it back together and it runs great and like before, it still doesn't use any oil. The problem was the front seal and remember the oil pump is behind the seal and it doesn't take any time to pump the oil out when the seal goes.

We didn't spend much money, 75.00 for turning the crank, less than 100.00 for bearing and not much for seals and gaskets...it was worth it!

The worst part is dealing with the timing chains...one in the front and I think it has two in the rear for the balance shafts.

Good luck with whatever you do!
Mark

 

[JPaul]

Did you not even have to pull the engine out? I haven't seen that possibility for a while, but then again, this is the first non-fwd vehicle I've had in a while.

On the topic of records, I pulled up my credit card history to try and find as much information as possible about the Walmart transaction, when I noticed an Orielly transaction the same day, and it's all come back to me now.

I was heading out on a trip from Utah to Colorado for Thanksgiving, and I had checked my oil level before I left. I was low, and I decided to stop at Orielly and get some oil to fill it up. If I am remembering correctly, it wasn't registering on the dipstick as I bought a 5 quart jug from Orielly to fill it back up with. I started back down the road but became really paranoid about it, especially since Iw as going to be going about 1200 miles on this trip. So I turned around, went to walmart and got some Mobil High Mileage synthetic and a filter and went back home, did my fastest oil change ever (we were already leaving behind schedule), and then went on my way. Of course a trip over Thanksgiving weekend was enough to drive it all from my mind, but I remember now being concerned about how long the oil had been in the engine.

I'll have to find that jug from Orielly and see how much I had to use to top it off with. I'm fairly confident now that this engine has been on it's way out for a while. If I find that it was a few quarts used from the orielly jug, then I am going to go to the dealer I bought the H3 from and demand their service records for that vehicle, hopefully there will be a note of everything they found, like if the oil level was low when they got it or not. I think the previous owner wasn't taking care of it mechanically and I'm suffering for it. I'm also going to see if I can get a copy of my receipt from Oreilly and provide that as well to the warranty company.

 

[JPaul]

Lucky day, I was able to rather easily get copies of the receipts from both Walmart and Orielly auto parts. Isn't it wonderful to live in a digital age?

I'm going to call the dealer I bought the H3 from and see if they can provide me with the service records from when they got it and hopefully it will have detailed information about the state of the fluids and vehicle.

I also found the jug of oil I bought at Orielly and I had used 2 quarts to fill it back up, so from when I bought it in May until November, it had only burned about 2 quarts of oil. From November to now though it burned 4 quarts. I know I did more mileage on this oil change though, as I had a 1200+ mile trip right after changing the oil and a 500 mile trip to Moab in March. The first 6 months I had it I pretty much just drove it around town and commuted to work (22 miles a day round trip commute).

The oil I got from Walmart was Mobil 1 High Mileage synthetic, and a Bosch oil filter (their $12 one, not the cheaper one). So I didn't cheap out on oil or the filter.

I'm not entirely sure what the odometer was at when I changed it, but I do have the driving tracker from Allstate and crunched the miles from that report and came up with around 7,200 miles. That doesn't seem like an excessive amount between oil changes, and certainly not enough to expect 4 quarts of oil to be burned away. I'll probably also have the dealer the H3 is at check the oil life percentage to see where it was at.

 

[JPaul]

Dealer called and left me a VM today, they've got the pan off and are just waiting to get the inspector for the warranty company out to check it out. Here's hoping I get good news sometime next week!

 

[alrock]

Good luck!

 

[Happy Hummer]

Any news?

 

[JPaul]

I got a call from the service guy at the dealer today (Tuesday), the inspector had come out Monday evening and checked it all out, he was supposed to hear from the inspector sometime this afternoon, but i haven't heard anything more yet. Hopefully by end of day tomorrow I should know more. Still really hoping they cover the replacement...

 

[JPaul]

Well, the dealership called me right before I left from work at 5PM. He had "good news and not so good news."

The good news is the warranty company is going to cover the replacement of the engine.

The "not so good news" is they are going to supply a used engine. Or I can take an "allowance" and pay another $2300 for a crate motor new from GM.

Honestly, considering the used engine apparently has 79K miles on it (7K less than my current broken one), and it should still be covered under the remainder of my warranty (4 years and about 87K miles left on that), and I really won't be any worse off than I was before, I feel using hte used engine is perfectly reasonable. I'm going to call the warranty company tomorrow morning to verify that the used engine would be covered under the remaining warranty though. Just to make sure.

As nice as a brand new engine would be, I don't feel it's necessary or even worth it (as long as it's covered by the warranty of course), especially since I'm probably going to end up selling the H3 after a couple more years or so and finding an Alpha to replace it with.

So hopefully I'll be able to get the H3 back in a couple weeks, though I'll have to ask the service guy what kind of timeframe to expect. I'm just assuming it'd be a couple weeks, since pulling the old engine and putting the replacement in really shouldn't take more than a day.

 

[Bigunit]

$2,300 for a new engine installed doesn't sound bad to me. The way I see it if it were me, that would keep my rig alive a little longer.