I think somewhere in the past there was a known failure with the very popular, mass produced 3800 v6 motors found in millions of Chevys, Pontiacs, Buicks and Oldsmobles from the late 1980’s to the early 2000’s.
My wife took the kid’s car that doesn’t get driven much at all to the pharmacy on Thursday after dinner. 6 miles awy she noticed smoke coming from under the hood. When she parked she pulled the hood open and noticed smoke coming from under the coil packs where the sparkplug wires connect at the front right side.
I got there 30 minutes later and started investigating. Nothing looked burned in anyway. I started the car. It started very quickly, no unusual noise, no smoking and idled smoothly. I was looking for any belt problem, idler pulley not seized, alt, AC, air pump and steering pump all good. I shut the car off and pulled the dipstick. Right off I noticed the oil was very thin. Ran (dripped) right off the stick and its smelled of gas.
We had it towed home. I will start working on it Monday at lunch time. I plan to drain the oil but catch what first comes out in a glass jar just to see if it will clearly separate.
The car has 90,000 original miles and its a 1995 Buick LaSabre Limited 3800 series engine. I could’t find anything that made sense on a Goole search - it could be I just didn’t dig deep enough, not sure.
Anybody have any ideas? my OBD reader doesn’t help, what can I use? Are there any codes for this year?
My wife took the kid’s car that doesn’t get driven much at all to the pharmacy on Thursday after dinner. 6 miles awy she noticed smoke coming from under the hood. When she parked she pulled the hood open and noticed smoke coming from under the coil packs where the sparkplug wires connect at the front right side.
I got there 30 minutes later and started investigating. Nothing looked burned in anyway. I started the car. It started very quickly, no unusual noise, no smoking and idled smoothly. I was looking for any belt problem, idler pulley not seized, alt, AC, air pump and steering pump all good. I shut the car off and pulled the dipstick. Right off I noticed the oil was very thin. Ran (dripped) right off the stick and its smelled of gas.
We had it towed home. I will start working on it Monday at lunch time. I plan to drain the oil but catch what first comes out in a glass jar just to see if it will clearly separate.
The car has 90,000 original miles and its a 1995 Buick LaSabre Limited 3800 series engine. I could’t find anything that made sense on a Goole search - it could be I just didn’t dig deep enough, not sure.
Anybody have any ideas? my OBD reader doesn’t help, what can I use? Are there any codes for this year?