2001 Camaro SS: Repair, Used or Reman?
#1
Teching In
Thread Starter
iTrader: (2)
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Conroe, TX
Posts: 19
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
![Default](https://ls1tech.com/forums/images/icons/icon1.gif)
Gents,
Just discovered oil in my son's 2001 SS radiator. Looks like probably a head gasket at a minimum. That's assuming the heads aren't cracked, so we'll have to have them looked at to make sure...
Best choice at this point assuming he'd like to keep the car for 3-4 more years as a daily driver...
1. Reman/crate engine...guessing about $5-6k for complete motor swap.
2. Repair the current motor (131,000 miles...has not had an easy life)...about a $3500 bill from my current mech to check the heads, head gaskets, water pump, hoses, flush, labor, etc.
3. Have a line on a 5.7 from a 2002 Camaro SS with 56,000 miles on it. Will be about $5k for a complete swap...
Been a long time since I've had to get this far into a repair and my son would like to keep the car until he's out of college.
Thanks for any thoughts...
Just discovered oil in my son's 2001 SS radiator. Looks like probably a head gasket at a minimum. That's assuming the heads aren't cracked, so we'll have to have them looked at to make sure...
Best choice at this point assuming he'd like to keep the car for 3-4 more years as a daily driver...
1. Reman/crate engine...guessing about $5-6k for complete motor swap.
2. Repair the current motor (131,000 miles...has not had an easy life)...about a $3500 bill from my current mech to check the heads, head gaskets, water pump, hoses, flush, labor, etc.
3. Have a line on a 5.7 from a 2002 Camaro SS with 56,000 miles on it. Will be about $5k for a complete swap...
Been a long time since I've had to get this far into a repair and my son would like to keep the car until he's out of college.
Thanks for any thoughts...
#5
Teching In
Thread Starter
iTrader: (2)
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Conroe, TX
Posts: 19
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
![Default](https://ls1tech.com/forums/images/icons/icon1.gif)
Question: should I just assume the heads are OK? Because a significant chunk of that bill is for the heads to go over and get checked and make sure they're not cracked. If the heads are OK, you're probably right...a $1k bill is reasonable. Would you guarantee the work if you didn't know if you may have a cracked head? Wish I knew more about this...
#6
Teching In
Thread Starter
iTrader: (2)
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Conroe, TX
Posts: 19
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
![Default](https://ls1tech.com/forums/images/icons/icon1.gif)
Good question...how would I know the difference?...the mech I talked to was convinced it was oil, and had been like that a while because the hoses looked to be oil soaked.
Trending Topics
#9
Moderator
iTrader: (20)
![Default](https://ls1tech.com/forums/images/icons/icon1.gif)
Question: should I just assume the heads are OK? Because a significant chunk of that bill is for the heads to go over and get checked and make sure they're not cracked. If the heads are OK, you're probably right...a $1k bill is reasonable. Would you guarantee the work if you didn't know if you may have a cracked head? Wish I knew more about this...
#10
11 Second Club
iTrader: (1)
![Default](https://ls1tech.com/forums/images/icons/icon1.gif)
Stop and ask yourself where pressurized oil can get to the coolant? THEN stop to consider oil and PS fluid and tranny fluid are all only under pressure while the engine runs BUT the coolant stays pressurized till it has cooled a fair bit so as others have said look for the other end of the contamination, likely the PS resivoir will show signs.
The answer is pretty much in radiator coolers of some sort, various vehicles can have engine oil coolers there, or PS as these guys are trying to tell you, and tranny coolers are extremely common in radiators, don't think I have ever worked on an automatic tranny car that didn't have a cooler in the radiator.
The answer is pretty much in radiator coolers of some sort, various vehicles can have engine oil coolers there, or PS as these guys are trying to tell you, and tranny coolers are extremely common in radiators, don't think I have ever worked on an automatic tranny car that didn't have a cooler in the radiator.
#11
Teching In
Thread Starter
iTrader: (2)
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Conroe, TX
Posts: 19
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
![Default](https://ls1tech.com/forums/images/icons/icon1.gif)
He said they have a dye they can run through the radiator and if there is any exhaust leakage out of the heads it will change the color of the dye (I hope I'm paraphrasing him correctly).
Why do I have two mechanics? Cause the second guy does great work, but takes forever to fix my car...the first guy always does really good work, but is more expensive...
If I had the time for my car to sit in the shop for a week at a time I'd always take it to the second guy.
Thanks again for all of the input fellas. It really helped me when I started trying to understand this issue.