New car

[Carlspike]

I'm looking at buying a lumina with a 3.4 for the first time. I'm familiar with the 3.1's but I don't know much about the 3.4. Is it reliable? What are some things I should look for before buying it?

[grandprixgtp_91]

if your talking about the 3.4L DOHC then you need to look at a few things.
1, timing belt, when was it changed, they only last 60,000 miles

2, alternator, they are a bitch to change, if it hasnt been changed in the last 3 years then do it or it will leave you stranded , and you cant do this one on the side of the road.

3,Oil pump drive o-ring, if its leaking, its only going to get worse,

4, tranny, if it acts up at all, it needs a new one, the 4t60-e is a piece of shit, and always break , my brother went through 4 trannys in 2 years.

5, they are confusing to work on at first, and if you dont understand the directions on the timing belt on this site, then dont attempt it, many people screw it up and drive it to the dealer and pay for it then after all the work they did.

Jake

[RednBlack]

they are confusing to work on at first, and if you dont understand the directions on the timing belt on this site, then dont attempt it, many people screw it up and drive it to the dealer and pay for it then after all the work they did.

And they usually screw it up. OMG! 4 Cams? WTF?

Oh, it's an LQ1. Not that intimidating to work on, just different. O-ring is a piece of cake. Yes, the tranny sux stock. But a good tranny guy can do a better job than GM.

Reliable? I vote "Yes", if you stay on top of it. If you don't, you have 600 pounds of crap. It's a mechanics engine.

There are some tricks, depending on the year. 94-95s are the most elusive. Tuning is the main one, someone is working on it. But the power band is awesome.

Even stock, it will put your balls near your ass.


Now I have to go work on my Fiat. Got 2 Weber downdrafts to rebuild.

OMG! 2 cams? WTF?

Let's see MM to inches..........

[Carlspike]

Yeah it's the 3.4 DOHC. I know the guy who owns the car and he has told me the timing belts were changed 20-30 thousand ago, so I guess I should have 30,00 left. I know the car used to leak like a quart of oil a day (probably the o-ring) but he's since fixed it. I'm not sure about the alternator, what is involved in changing that? I'm told the only thing it needs is a crank sensor, the guy that owns it says it starts and runs fine but after it gets warm it stalls and shows no crank reference on the scan tool. The problem is he says it's going to suck to change, I've not really looked at the engine so I dunno. I'm good about staying up on maintenence so hopefully it'll be ok. Thanks for the help and let me know if you think of anything else.

[grandprixgtp_91]

the crank sensor can be a bitch, usually you have to drop the oil pan and pop it out, because you cant pull it out. u might get luck though and might be able to pop it out with a pry bar, but sometimes they break in the block, and then u need to drop the pan and pop it out for sure. and the alternator is at the bottom of the engine inbetween the engine and tranny, with an auto its like a 6- 8 hour job if youve never done it before, stick and its a 2 hour job tops.

Jake

Jake

[Grim[Z34]]

I got a 95 dohc monte and its got 198,300 miles on it and the trany works fine grabs good enough to burn rubber outa 1st and take off in 2nd.. I drive hard sometimes..