So I bought this car about a month ago for $900 and the guy told me that the cylinder head was new and that the head gasket was done as well and it only had 400miles since the job was done. Everything looked good to me so i bought it i knew it would need some work but i was willing to put it in since i needed a car. Come to find out the head gasket was blown and it was spitting coolant out of the side of the engine. So i embarked on the journey of doing the head gasket myself i had the heads resurfaced the guy had given me some kit he got on eBay as a spare. As of now the car has been running but i’ve Noticed some oddities the oil pressure light seems to come on and flicker when the car is either at idle or stopped and it seems to be putting coolant into the overflow resivoir and i’ve Also noticed that the radiation fans don’t come on when car reaches temperature even after replacing radiation fan switch i know they work because i’ve Bridged that connection with a paper clip and it worked fine. Any help would be greatly appreciated please
-Andrew

 

How many mile on this thing ? First , disregard what anybody has said about the history or condition of this engine , you can safely think it's all lies . The oil pump may be shot , you can hook up another pressure gauge to get an actual reading , then you'll know if it's the pump or sending unit . You can replace the coolant temp. sensor and see if the fans come on then that's about all I can help you with there . A new radiator cap may keep the coolant out of the reservoir unless the pressure is too high from another problem . The reservoir will not hold pressure it has a pin hole . Now see if the chassis is rotted out because there's no sense in doing things half ***. You could get a motor running in it and then the tranny will croak , brake lines may fail or suspension points will be so rotted it won't pass inspection . There's really only one way to do an older car like that and that's to go through the whole thing . Maybe you can part it out or find another and make one good one out of two . That;s what I think.

 

The engine has about 185k miles on it the body is in great shape for the year as far as the transmission goes it shifts smoothly ive read that this model was notorious for having trans problems. i dont want to give up on it just yet i've put a decent amount of money in it just to start over with a different car im hoping to do some trouble shooting and hopefully see what can be done
what would you think of an engine swap if chassis is in good shape?

 

From what I know a motor swap is quite a project , do the diagnosis and see what the problems actually are , these engines can be a P.I.T.A. Think it through and weigh your options