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13aceofspades, Please chime in here. You seem to be the resident GM 90 degree V6 expert. Or anyone who has solid experience in this problem.
It is my room mate’s car. 1999 grand am with a 3.4 (no “ram air”)
It keeps losing coolant, almost to the point of having to be slightly replenished each day she drives it. She drives it maybe 25 miles in a day.
I have bled it several times, to no avail.
Report after report on car complaint’s website point to intake gaskets. Tried replacing thermostat just to eliminate that as a problem. Since that didn’t fix anything, I guess we have to try intake gaskets. Yes, I plan to do the LIM and UIM.
I should mention that the engine starts and runs just fine, but mysteriously losing coolant. We are NOT running dex-cool (dex-kill?)Other symptoms include the heater temp varying with engine speed. Sometimes the engine temp gauge is unstable. A couple times it overheated, both times on the highway.
What would be a good choice of gasket though? The ones at Autozone are some cheap-ass plastic but I read somewhere that even the updated metal ones don’t solve the problem for long.
Well, that’s it. thank you in advance for any input.
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Believe it or not, you’re best going OEM. The original problem was that the factory gasket was vulnerable to Dex-cool coolant which ate away at the gasket quickly. So most of the damage was done to the gasket early in the car’s life (assuming it’s the original gasket) back when it still had Dex-cool in it. GM reformulated the gasket materials so they don’t react with Dex anymore (shouldn’t matter since she no longer runs Dex anyway).
I found this guy’s guide to fixing the issue and he said this:
“Parts you need to fix this include upper intake maniold gaskets, lower intake manifold gaskets, valve cover gaskets, 1 distributor plug gasket, and two EGR gaskets. If you go to the dealer and ask for the intake manifold gasket kit they usually know exactly what you’re talking about and will get you everything you need. Note GM made some new intake gaskets that are entirely black and have metal rings in them. Make sure you get these.”
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