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Was the drop in mileage sudden or slow? Anything you can think of that happened before it? Do you still have good power and a normal engine idle?
Was the drop in mileage sudden or slow? Anything you can think of that happened before it? Do you still have good power and a normal engine idle?
Ditto to what mckrishes said. Make sure you are up on maintenance. Also, leave more info. Mileage, make/model (the 3800 was in everything from small cars to mini vans), any other problems like a loss of power…
To add to the list above, you should have a Mass AirFlow sensor on your throttle body. It might be in the boot though, I can’t recall in Series 2. It makes a fair difference. Check your tire pressure.
Ditto to what mckrishes said. Make sure you are up on maintenance. Also, leave more info. Mileage, make/model (the 3800 was in everything from small cars to mini vans), any other problems like a loss of power…
To add to the list above, you should have a Mass AirFlow sensor on your throttle body. It might be in the boot though, I can’t recall in Series 2. It makes a fair difference. Check your tire pressure.
I would like to add a +1 to high mileage oil. My last car consumed about 1.5 quarts of oil over 2000 miles. After a couple of changes (specifically with Valvoline conventional High Mileage), I was down to about 1 quart over 3000 miles. It wasn’t a cure all, but that was a significant improvement. When my current car rolled over 100K miles, I switched to a high mileage synthetic. I didn’t have any issues to fix, so I didn’t really see any difference between it.
I was really confused about this too. When I got my Craftsmen impact, the instructions were crazy for maintenance. I’ve never done anything more than oil the air inlet, and this thing wants a ton of stuff done just to store it for more than a couple weeks.
Yeah, clean anything you see, just don’t knock it down into the engine. I saw a guy (maybe on youtube) that had came up with some adapters to use his shop vac and suck up all the gunk. That sounds like the best option.
Bubbles can be bad, but if you just replaced the rad, it’s probably burping air out of the system. Even if there isn’t any air in the system, the coolant level will rise as it gets hot and kind of slosh around a bit. Park your car slightly up hill, and try it again. You should work the bubbles out quickly. Be sure to turn the heat on in the car, but keep the blower motor on low. This will make sure the care opens up the valve to let coolant flow through the heater core and make sure there isn’t any trapped air in there either.
On a side note, it’s pretty cool to see a GM 3800 in a rear wheel configuration. The 3800 is a popular motor here in the USA, but I’ve never seen it used on a rear wheel drive before. :cheer:
Oh yeah, there is no miracle in a bottle. I’ve just had good results with it. It won’t fix a valve, lifter, or injector but it will help if the issues are minor. Repeated use of SeaFoam with rapid oil changes will clean out a dirty engine. I like MMO too. I use that in small engines and my motorcycle mostly. Its more gentle of a cleaner than SeaFoam, and I’ve had great luck using it to fog an engine and doing a top-end cylinder soak.
If you find that you truly have a sludge issue, the only safe removal is to do a rebuild and have the block/heads cleaned. I’d clean any sludge I could find in the top or bottom end, but trying to flush it out can kill engines.