things i had to do to my malibu

01MALIBULS · 06-14-2006, 01:09 AM

about six months after we bought the car it started to leak antifreeze.well my father in law is a mechanic and found the problem to be the intake manifold gasket..surprise surprise.seems like GM used a poor quality gasket along with corrosive dexcool antifreeze and they still refuse to make a recall .this is why they are going into the toilet and also wanted to say their customer care is really horrible.well we changed the gasket,along with the spark plugs and wires,the drive belt,checked the fuel injectors and replaced the o rings on them,and basically did a tuneup on the car since we tore it down that far.we did some other things but i cant remember what.we flushed the antifreeze twice to get rid of all the old dexcool and filled her back up with prestone.well sometime later we also replaced the brake rotors and pads with NON GM EQUIPMENT.that was another complaint ive heard from malibu owners was the brake wear issue too early.well it turns out that under warranty GM would use the same awful pads and rotors that originally came on the car so people kept having the same pad and rotor problems until they either switched brands or went with a better quality parts.one more thing was wrong .it turned out to be the rear hydraulic motor mount that was starting to go bad so we changed that as well.the only other problems ive run into are in my last post.i think now of course i wish i wouldve bought something else,but since we are stuck with it,it will perform fine now and into the future.im all for American made goods but these companies better start coming out with better quality goods or all of our money is going to go to import manufacturers.

sevenslotgrill · 08-04-2006, 11:23 AM

After reading your post I had to reply.

My girlfriend had the exact same coolant problem and did the same fix. Hers is a 99 Cutlass GL with the same 3100 motor. She bought it new in 1999 and I think the fix was done at around 60,000 miles. It has 130,000 on it now and still running good except for some minor piston slap at startup which goes away in a minute or so.. A mechanic told me that GM fixed the problem so I guess they sprung for better gaskets.

Right now her fan speeds don't work except for 4 and 5 and I think it is the blower motor resistor. As soon as I can figure out exactly where it is and what it looks like I'm going to try to fix it myself.

Anyway , overall its ok and gets 29mpg on the highway and is pretty snappy for a small V6.

All cars will have issues but I agree that the poor gasket/antifreeze problem shouldn't have happened.

Dave

wymi · 08-04-2006, 02:58 PM

The blower resistor is up behind the glove box, it's an easy fix. To the OP, how did you know the rear motor mount was bad?
Thanks.

sevenslotgrill · 08-04-2006, 03:55 PM

wymi.......Thanks, I found it. It is the furthest one back and looks like a wireing harness goes from the blower motor to the rear and plugged into the blower motor resistor. looks like 2 small bolts. I'll take it out and get another.

Thanks again
Dave

01MALIBULS · 09-23-2006, 02:31 AM

wymi. i dont know if youll read this but ill post it anyway.sorry i took so long to reply to ive been out of the country.anyway about the transmission mounts,at first i thought it was the filter so i replaced that and put the right amount of fluid in it.and the loud bang when shifting still happened.so i had my girl take me to get my truck from a friend whos a mechanic (cause he borrowed it to move)well i told him about the problem and we put the car on the rack.as we started it and shifted it throughout the gears he saw it and showed me that it was the mounts that were causing the hard shifting.so since i knew what it was we replaced all the motor mounts and tranny mounts.i forgot how many trans mounts are there.but anyway it solved the problem...

wymi · 09-23-2006, 05:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 01MALIBULS

wymi. i dont know if youll read this but ill post it anyway.sorry i took so long to reply to ive been out of the country.anyway about the transmission mounts,at first i thought it was the filter so i replaced that and put the right amount of fluid in it.and the loud bang when shifting still happened.so i had my girl take me to get my truck from a friend whos a mechanic (cause he borrowed it to move)well i told him about the problem and we put the car on the rack.as we started it and shifted it throughout the gears he saw it and showed me that it was the mounts that were causing the hard shifting.so since i knew what it was we replaced all the motor mounts and tranny mounts.i forgot how many trans mounts are there.but anyway it solved the problem...

Thanks, I'll have them checked out. How difficult was it to change the Trans mounts?

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