need some advice on 89 Park Avenue

Hey everyone. I need a car and I have an offer to buy a Buick '89 Park Avenue for $850. It has a great interior and loaded with features for the time. The downside is that it has 173,000 miles on it. To my knowledge it dons't have any big problems and it runs fine. The guy selling it says that it seems like to him that it shifts too often in Over-drive so he suggests that for in town driving you use regular drive insted. Anyone see any potential problems with this buy? Is it a good price?

Sorry I forgot to mention in my last post that the car had a trasmission problem a while back where it would not shift out of 2nd. He got it fixed by having a mechanic clean out the transmission and they guy told him that it was because the transmission wasn't serviced enough. He never got the Tranny rebuilt, apparently this is a very expensive thing for this car. Someone please give me some feed back on this and the price. Also it looks nice on the out side.

Anything that drives, looks good and runs decent is worth $850.00!! The transmission can be expensive to rebuild and the average life is between 100K and 200K miles. I know that is a wide range, but it all depends on the type of service that has been performed. I would buy it and drive it until the tranny goes and then donate it to charity

yeah you got a pretty good point lol. Do you own a buick also? This one that i am looking to buy has way comfortable seats.

Hi! I recently bought an 89 PA also. Mine has 185k on it and runs strong, but the tranny has some issues too.

It probably needs new fluid and filter in it, but as of now it has very high RPM's when in park after I've driven it either for a long distance or if I accelerated sharply at some point while driving....I guess it could be a bad TPS also.

I got mine with a cracked winshield and broken drivers side mirror for $525 so I'd say that you're looking at a good deal. Parts for this car are very easy to find and generally inexpensive as well. The 3.8 engines can run up to 350k or beyond if taken care of so you are looking at a lot of life left in that PA.

Even if the PA tranny goes, why not get one at a junkyard? I've never priced one, but I imagine you could get one from a fairly low mileage wreck for cheap and just swap it in instead of rebuilding the old one.

And yes....the seats are sooo comfy :)

I agree with Alibi, every wreckyard around my town has TONS of low mileage buicks and other GM vehicles with the same transmission as yours, and I'm certain you can find one near you if ever needed in the future. I bought my 92' for $500 with several "small" problems, the worst damage was the driver side passenger door having a gaping hole and dent...a trip to the boneyard and 80 bucks got me a "new" door...now my car's just fun and I only paid $500!
So for $850 with a clean body inside and out, I say go for it, it sounds like a great deal to me!

89-91 PA and Lesabres 4T60's are twitchy no matter. Some get particularly fussy going in into reverse and kind "slam" into it. For the asking price, so long as the rest of the car is solid, why not. I'd just pick up a junker or rebuilt transaxle sooner then later....

But i would leave it alone! Unless you have a date or mileage of last service.

I sold my 89 that way and advised the kid not to mess with it, only problem I had was the clunky shift into reverse, no forward gear problems, and when I bought the car with 142K miles on it I didn't know when it was serviced last. Long story short, kid was out of a car 2 months later when he changed out the fluid and filter.

go for it.

my '91 has 195k miles and does downshifts from overdrive to third gear often. always did.

hey guys thanks for all the advice and opinions. i bought the car and it runs good but I have one problem. The car battery died on me 8 or 9 days after i got it. Please see my new thread at this link http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=3946272#post3946272 Thanks again.