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So I own a 96 Ford Explorer, got it for cheap from my pastor, but I got laid off before I got a chance to get it insured and registered, so I’m selling it to split up the money.
My friend is helping me out by selling me his 1996 Chevrolet Cavalier for $400… yes, it’s this cheap for a reason…
Allot of the problems I can handle, he says the clutch feels spongy sometimes, same with the brakes, there’s a nasty knock in the engine that I have to look into, etc. but there’s one that has me stumped, but first, here, have some specs:
1996 Chevrolet Cavalier, base model, 2dr coupe
2.2L 4cyl fuel injected engine with a whopping 299331 ( I’ll put in a nice trip up to jax and put it at 300000… lol)
Muncie Getrag 282 (I think) 5 speed manual transmissionAND THERE IT IS. the problem. In the tranny.
He was driving it the other day and went to back into a parking spot, went to put it in reverse, clutch all the way down, and it wouldn’t go into reverse, tried all the other gears, it went in just fine, to get it into reverse, you have to let off the clutch until just about where it catches then the shifter will go into reverse, without its terrible grinding noise, which confuses me even further. Now i know that in many manual transmissions, you can’t put it in reverse unless the car is at a complete stop since it’s not engaged by a syncro, but an idler gear, but the car wasn’t moving at all.
First thing I thought was clutch, he said it was feeling spongy, maybe it just needs to be bled and refilled, but if that were the case I’d think that this would happen with forward gears as well, so I’m not sure and asking for help, also note that this problem is intermittent…
And yes, I’ve already searched the forum and I can’t find anything on this problem… HELP PLEASE! 🙂
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Let’s think about this for a moment. You already said that the engine has a knock. That might be reason enough to avoid this vehicle. I see this often. Someone that doesn’t have sufficient funds gets a ‘cheep’ vehicle thinking they can ‘fix it up’ and have reliable transportation. That’s just not true. In fact, most times it’s just the opposite. A $400 vehicle can bleed you dry and have you shell out WAY more than if you had just bought a decent vehicle to begin with.
In your case, if you have an engine with a knock on top of what I believe to be clutch problems, but could also be transmission problems, why get involved? You might do well to ride the bus or find alternative transportation until you’re able to afford a better vehicle. Otherwise, you may be wasting your time and more importantly, your money.
Good luck and keep us posted.
yemalow I have to agree 150% with Eric. I see it all the time also, a 400-500 dollar car that quickly becomes a 2,000 dollar car once you get into repairing it.
You have what you call a nasty engine knock. That means you will likely have to rebuild that motor (500-2000) dollars depending on what is bad, how much machining needs to be done and the labor that goes into pulling a motor and rebuilding it. Than you have a transmission issue that could cost you either replacing the transmission (if you can find a good one for a reasonable price) or rebuilding it. You are easily looking at (300-1000) dollars to deal with that issue.
I would wait and keep looking for a car and pass up the Cavalier, you will likely have to sell the Explorer just to fund fixing the Cavalier which won’t help you out one bit.
Thanks for the help guys, I did end up avoiding the cavalier, now I have a 2001 Ford Focus, price looked iffy to me ($400) so I had my step father come look at it, since he’s been in the car repair business for 35+ years, He drove it around, it goes through all the gears fine (yes, it’s a 5 speed, yay! 😀 ) and he says it runs like a champ or having 266000 miles on it. They said it didn’t have power steering, which turned out to be a bad P/s pump, and needs a brake line replaced (which ended up being found after they made the craigslist post), so we settled on $300 for the focus, brake line should be relatively easy since I have access to my school’s auto tech shop with all the bells and whistles, just did an oil change and put some Lucas in it (I hear it’s a marvelous investment) and she runs awesome! Just doesn’t stop well… haha.
Again, thanks for the help guys!
P.S. Eric, I Figured you’d like to hear this, I’ve always been a big computer guy, got technicians licenses and what not but I wanted to get into cars a bit since I thought they were cool, so I found your videos and I enjoy cars way more than I ever thought I would, I recently applied and got accepted to University of Northwestern Ohio’s High Performance Motorsports program! I figured you’d like to hear that you and your videos helped someone find what they really want to spend their life doing, and that they’ll be pursuing that objective relatively close to you!
Thanks a ton from South Florida!
-Hunter Iemmolo
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