I was wondering if any of you have replaced or performed an engine R&R on their Venture. The Haynes manual states that the engine comes out through the bottom side of the vehicle.
The manual warns that the major deterrent on this job for the home mechanic is getting the vehicle high enough to gain the required clearance to slide the engine along with the front sub-frame out from under the vehicle.
So I was wondering if any of you have performed this job at home without the luxury of a vehicle lift/hoist. I would be interested to hear any methods or techniques any of you have used to replace an engine on a Venture van.
I need to do a head gasket job on my 98 112,000 mile Venture and I fear that damage was done to the bearings so I would like to just pull the engine out so I can check for other damage and thoroughly clean the engine of sludge/coolant-oil mix or may just need another engine.
For the last month we have been dealing with erratic engine temperatures and noticed the coolant was low. After adding coolant the temperature is normal for about 3 days of driving to work and misc in town. (About 50-70 miles) I saw no external leaks and saw no obvious signs it is burning out the exhaust and the engine oil looks good with no water droplets and level is not high so it appeared that the coolant was not going into the oil.
The intake gaskets and all of the lifters were replaced at 88,000 miles by a dealership and they reinstalled the orange type fluid. I have been adding prestone anti-freeze that says can be mixed with any color or types of antifreeze…..you guys ever use this stuff?
After a couple of weeks of adding a quart of coolant every 3 days we acquired an inconsistent tappet noise (sounded high like excessive rocker arm lash) that would go away after a few minutes of running The engine also runs rough when first starts but then smoothes out after a minute and seems to coincide with the tappet noise. The tappet noise does occur only when cold starting but is sporadic and not occurring on every cold start.
And now for the Grand Finale……….. my wife came home the other night and said that now the engine oil light came on. I went out to check the oil and no oil registered on the stick. I pulled the oil filler cap and discovered that all the oil is in the top of the engine and not draining back to the pan. I stuck a screwdriver in the oil filler and found a thin oil/coolant mix around 3” deep. The odd thing is that the stuff that drains back to the pan has the look of fresh oil right after an oil change. It looks like the 3 part combination of orange coolant, supposed universal coolant and engine oil mixes without any separation droplets and has a very clear look as opposed to looking like other coolant/oil contaminated cocktails that have an appearance more like melted coffee ice-cream
That is why it fooled me, because it LOOKED like good oil but I should have felt it with my fingers because it has a distinctly sticky/gummy feel that I may have noticed as something being wrong.