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here's my quandary. i have a 1998 3.8 w/140k miles. about a month ago it developed a ticking that was noticeable at idle but was more prevalent around 2300 rpms. i had 2 mechanics look at it and both told me i'd need to replace the engine. however, they came to this conclusion by just listening with their ear, no diags or anything. so i've just been driving it rather easy until i could get a firm diagnosis on the actual problem. well the other night i was playing around with a friend who has a BMW out on the highway and drove it a bit hard and when i got home the tick had turned into a down right nasty knocking and slapping. it sounds almost like something is about to give way and come straight out the side of the block. i'm not looking for another $500/month car payment so repair or replacement is what i'm looking at.
so i feel i have 3 options. 1) take it in and have the a shop just drop in a rebuilt engine, ($4-5k maybe?). 2) buy a rebuilt engine and swap it out myself. or 3) pull the engine and start tearing into it, see if i can find the problem and then fix it up. now i should point out that i have never taken on this much in the way of an automotive engine, but i'm pretty mechanically inclined and i have a friend who's offered to help along the way. i'm thinking of #3 right now, as my friend pointed out to me, if we get in there and it's looking too bad or to difficult, drop back and punt, get another engine and drop it in (option #2).
so a few questions, what am i getting into here, is it worth the effort to attempt to fix what i have? how hard is it to get the engine out? it's tucked back up in there so far it doesn't even look like it will come out. any tricks, hints, or gottchas that would help? what shop manual(s) do you recommend? if i go the swap route, what's the consensus on Jasper engines, (75k warranty)? that seems to be what most of the shops around here want to put in. any other ideas or suggestions, i'm all ears at this point.
one last thing, i'm not looking to put a lot of high performance, after market stuff in. it ran really good before and i just want it back running good again that will give me many more miles of good driving experience.
thanks in advance for any information you can provide.
so i feel i have 3 options. 1) take it in and have the a shop just drop in a rebuilt engine, ($4-5k maybe?). 2) buy a rebuilt engine and swap it out myself. or 3) pull the engine and start tearing into it, see if i can find the problem and then fix it up. now i should point out that i have never taken on this much in the way of an automotive engine, but i'm pretty mechanically inclined and i have a friend who's offered to help along the way. i'm thinking of #3 right now, as my friend pointed out to me, if we get in there and it's looking too bad or to difficult, drop back and punt, get another engine and drop it in (option #2).
so a few questions, what am i getting into here, is it worth the effort to attempt to fix what i have? how hard is it to get the engine out? it's tucked back up in there so far it doesn't even look like it will come out. any tricks, hints, or gottchas that would help? what shop manual(s) do you recommend? if i go the swap route, what's the consensus on Jasper engines, (75k warranty)? that seems to be what most of the shops around here want to put in. any other ideas or suggestions, i'm all ears at this point.
one last thing, i'm not looking to put a lot of high performance, after market stuff in. it ran really good before and i just want it back running good again that will give me many more miles of good driving experience.
thanks in advance for any information you can provide.
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