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Eric, what don’t you like about Cadillac Northstars? You grunted about them when you saw something Cadillac Northstar related, in your tool video.
everyone, what are the common symptoms or problems, that need service or repair more than usual? or what dont you like about them.
thanks for the videos.
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Personally, they aren’t easy to fix after you catch them on fire! A friend of mine was thinking old school, and poured gas into the throttle body thinking that would start the motor, but it caught it on fire instead. Really, all he needed was a fuel pump, now he needs alot of things! Lol
First time you have to replace a starter on one you will curse the ” person(s) ” who thought burying it under the intake was a good idea.
Yea, the starters are a real pain but the main problem is the head gaskets. It gets worse. It’s not the head gaskets that are the problem. The head bolts actually pull out of the aluminum block and cause them to get loose. When doing the head gaskets (which are a REAL pain to do) you need to drill out all the head bolt holes in the block and install rethread kits to do a proper repair.
So, bad design and difficult to fix would be the short answer.
There is a DeLorean at DMC Cali with a northstar in it it wont run no one will fix it you think you could eric?
I must add a bit to this….
I agree with everything stated thus far, ecspecially the head issues. I’m not the cadillac guy at my dealer (thankfully) but I can assure you that the parts are exspensive, the labor is exspensive, and to be honest that’s why the car is 60,000k new. It’s made for people who can drop the cash to have it repaired (or trade it after it’s warranty) like a audi or mercedes.I’d do a starter 10x over before I replaced belts on those damn things.
A DeLorean with a Northstar? What an abomination. Why would you get rid of the flux capacitor for that?
Flux Capacitor LOL it wasnt me doing it i was DeLorean shopping and that what the DMC Midwest Dealership told me
I’ve never worked on a Delorian before, that might be cool. I HATE working on Northstars though. Just another GM abomination in my eyes. And for anyone who tries to defend them I worked at a dealer where we also had the Oldsmobile line which runs the same engine in their Auroras. Just about EVERY one of those things had a failed head gasket due to this problem. Bad design, bad machining, bad materials, a POS from birth. I can’t see how the same company can make a bullet proof small block V8 for 50 years and dump it for crap like that.
Northstars had a lot of problems in the 90’s, they are a lot more reliable though after 2002 or 2004, my 2003 Deville has over 200,000 miles and I have never had to have head gasket work done. Northstars last long a long time too I’ve seen plenty with over 300,000 miles some reaching 400,000 miles and still running beautifully. There’s even a few high mileage 90’s Northstars that haven’t had head gasket issues. I personally am a big Northstar fan, there aren’t very many engines out there that can give you V8 power and performance with V6 fuel economy. I know a lot of people complain about the cars it’s in being front wheel drive, but I don’t really care, in fact when General Motors was designing cars like the Deville they had taken surveys and asked whether it should be FWD or RWD and most people said it didn’t matter. I think it’s funny my 10 year old Northstar with over 200,000 miles on it starts and runs better than my buddy’s 09 Accord.
The Cadillac engineers were apparently given the directive to crank things up a notch, but they went a bit too far. There is a wide gray area, were you can keep on making cylinder walls and head bolts thinner and thinner, and some things, like weight, cost, heat dissipation, and moving mass get better and better, but less quantifiable things, like long-term warpage over many temperature cycles and bolt stretch, and thread creep, those things are harder to measure. So the engineers could go to management and show the bar charts where a lot of things got 24.5% better, and they got the go ahead to make the darn things. It wasn’t til years later that things started to break. And shoehorning that large an engine into a small space compounds the problem. A lot of repairs require that the engine be pulled, and last time I looked, in the shop manual, there are like THIRTY FOUR PAGES of small print of what you have to do to pull the engine. Not fun for the technician or for the car owner who gets a $5,000 bill.
Yeah, GM finally fixed the issue with the Northstars and Shortstars, but by the time that happened the reputation was beat up so bad no one really wanted that engine anymore.
The ones made in the 90s also has some cooling system issues that contributed to the head bolt issues add that to the extreme difficulty of pulling the heads with the engine still in place and you end up with a car that needed frequent head gasket repairs that required the pulling of the power plant to do the work. Add all that to the leaking problems of the split-block and a rear main that loved to leak and the only way to fix either is to pull the power plant.
I did not have a big issue with the starters under the intake, heck the intake comes off pretty easily.
This website is a company that specializes in North/Short star parts and engine rebuild services.
[quote=”wysetech” post=77982]Ohhh…And you forgot to mention the oil leakage from everywhere![/quote]
😆 yes I did, I mentioned the split block.
That was the WORST design ever, crankcase pressures and heat caused those bad boys to leak like crazy.
And shoehorning that large an engine into a small space compounds the problem. A lot of repairs require that the engine be pulled, and last time I looked, in the shop manual, there are like THIRTY FOUR PAGES of small print of what you have to do to pull the engine. Not fun for the technician or for the car owner who gets a $5,000 bill.
ugggggh, don’t remind me.
I have rebuilt 2 Northstars and 3 Quad fours. After the last quad I promised I would never do that to myself again.
I just replaced a water pump on a caddy with a North Star. Not a difficult job but you need a special tool to do the job.
I had to buy one for $30.00. I didn’t mind but I might not ever use it again.
[quote=”wysetech” post=78069]I just replaced a water pump on a caddy with a North Star. Not a difficult job but you need a special tool to do the job.
I had to buy one for $30.00. I didn’t mind but I might not ever use it again.[/quote]
Dang, I wish I knew you needed one. I would have sent you mine.
I bought it over 10 years ago and used it only twice ugh.
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