Back in the 1990's, a banker here in Nebraska had an '87 Buick Park Lane with a 3.8 engine and an engine knock. As I recall, it had about 70K miles on it. He gave it to one of my wife's brothers, Ed, on the condition that it not be parted out or sold to a salvage yard.
Ed brought it to my shop. I dropped the oil pan and found the #1 rod bearing spun, almost unheard of with a 3.8, particularly with that low mileage. It was a nice car, otherwise, so my Ed told me to go ahead and fix it. I pulled and disassembled the engine and sent the crankshaft out to be ground.
The problem was, a fiber cam gear had shredded and the debris had plugged the oil pump. I'd never seen that on a 3.8, but it was common on the old 3.0 engines, and since they both took the same cam gear GM must have used up some fiber cam gears by putting them in some 3.8's.
Anyway, about then the banker contacted Ed with a big sob story that the car had been his late wife's car, that she really loved that car, and he wanted to know if he could have the car back. Ed told him that would be hard to do because the car was at his brother-in-law's shop having the engine rebuilt. The banker said he didn't care, he'd gladly pay the bill on the engine if he could just have the car back.
I went ahead and reassembled the engine with new piston rings, all new bearings, and a new cam gear. When I presented the car and the bill to Ed, he wrote me a check and added $500 to it. He said he'd get more than that out of the banker when he gave him the car back. I never heard how that ended up.
Ed passed away a couple of years ago, but the last we knew the banker's son was still driving the car.
Upload one or more videos to your post. Photo and video filesizes should be less than 5MB. Formats allowed are gif, jpg, png, ogg, mp4, mov, and avi. Be sure to use filenames without spaces or special characters, and filetypes of 3 digits lower case.
We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today. [ About Us ]
Today's Featured Article - The Day Mom Drove the 8N - by Brian Browning. My Dad was wanting to put in a garden but couldn't operate the 8N and handle the old horse drawn plow he had found and rigged up to use with the tractor. Well, he decided to go get Mom out of the house and have her drive the tractor while he walked behind the plow. You got to understand that while my Mom is a hard worker who will always help whenever she can... she had never operated farm machinery before that day. Dad got her out there, explained how the clutch was the same as in our o
... [Read Article]
Latest Ad:
Oliver 550 Diesel runs like a watch three point hitch pto engine gone threw about two hundred hours ago nice clean tractor
[More Ads]
All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this website, including design and content, without written permission is strictly prohibited. Trade Marks and Trade Names contained and used in this Website are those of others, and are used in this Website in a descriptive sense to refer to the products of others. Use of this Web site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy
TRADEMARK DISCLAIMER: Tradenames and Trademarks referred to within Yesterday's Tractor Co. products and within the Yesterday's Tractor Co. websites are the property of their respective trademark holders. None of these trademark holders are affiliated with Yesterday's Tractor Co., our products, or our website nor are we sponsored by them. John Deere and its logos are the registered trademarks of the John Deere Corporation. Agco, Agco Allis, White, Massey Ferguson and their logos are the registered trademarks of AGCO Corporation. Case, Case-IH, Farmall, International Harvester, New Holland and their logos are registered trademarks of CNH Global N.V.
