The $450 2002 Park Avenue Ultra Experience

My Knock-knock joke 'Blazer of Glory' sold a bit sooner than I had expected, and since cheap convertibles (what I really want) are rather scarce at the moment, I decided to set my budget looooow and my expectations almost as low in finding another vehicle to serve as a beater until the weather warms up enough for the DeLorean to be a reasonable option to drive consistently.

After a week of searching, I came across this car- a 2002 Buick Park Avenue Ultra with 188,000 miles and woes of a blown head gasket with an asking price of $700. The Ultra sports the supercharged version of the Series II 3800 engine, which according to spec puts out at least 240 hp- and the engines are notorious for lower intake manifold gasket failures that look a lot like a head gasket failure so, I decided it might be worth rolling the dice on it NOT actually needing a head gasket and went to take a look at it.

After deciding it was in decent enough shape, I asked the seller of they had any flexibility in their price- and was told, "If you buy it today, I'll take $450 for it."

A few hours later, I had the title and they had $450.

The car is still sitting in their driveway because SWMBO was at work until too late to reasonably be trying to ferry it home- we'll go over tomorrow afternoon and see if it can make it the 10 miles or so home from there.

I picked up a new battery for it ($130, but will get $20 back from a rebate) and a new radiator cap since I noticed that it was leaking when we had it running for a few minutes ($6). Have already ordered a set of intake gaskets and the metal upgrade elbows and a coolant flush so I can replace the dexcrap it likely has in it now (about $90 total)

So, current spent: about $660. Hopefully it does just need the LIM gaskets and it will be a sold (and fun) beater.

Will take and post pics once the car gets home tomorrow.

GRM'er - pays for car, gets the title, runs home and starts build thread. Doesn't even have car yet!

Here's a tip.
After all the cooling system work is done, there may be some air in the system. The top of the thermostat housing has a bleeder screw. Get the car up to temp and then turn this screw to bleed off the air.
Be mindful to wear a glove because hot steam will be released. When is is no longer releasing steam but rather releasing full fluid coolant then you are done.

NGTD wrote: GRM'er - pays for car, gets the title, runs home and starts build thread. Doesn't even have car yet!

Now have the car home. It did far better than expected on the 8 mile or so drive home including getting caught in a slow traffic jam for about a mile. Temp ever got above 200, and dropped down to around 180 when I got t moving again.

Babied it until the the very end- and then punched it when I turned onto the main road near my house. Holy hell does that thing move! I like it!

Good to hear - now PICS!!!

NGTD wrote: Good to hear - now PICS!!!

Will get some pics of it tomorrow after I run it through the car wash. It's been an absolutely beautiful at here so spent the rest of the day enjoying the nice weather with SWMBO.

JohnRW1621 wrote: Here's a tip. After all the cooling system work is done, there may be some air in the system. The top of the thermostat housing has a bleeder screw. Get the car up to temp and then turn this screw to bleed off the air. Be mindful to wear a glove because hot steam will be released. When is is no longer releasing steam but rather releasing full fluid coolant then you are done.

The H and C body guys also drill a 1/8 hole in the thermostat to aid in bleeding and help them run a little cooler.

the engines are notorious for lower intake manifold gasket failures that look a lot like a head gasket failure... and a new radiator cap since I noticed that it was leaking when we had it running for a few minutes

That's a fairly ironic combination of statements. Let's hope your cooling system isn't actually being prematurely over-pressurized by a combustion leak into the cooling system that cant come from the lower intake gaskets!

But either way no big deal. It's not like those cars are hard to work on. Worst case scenario it had water in the cylinders and oil for a long time and has bearing damage or bore rust, but more likely you'll be able to fix it just fine even if it is headgaskets.

There is definitely the chance the head gasket actually is shot- we'll see what my testing over the next few days comes up with. One interesting note is that SWMBO said that it want blowing white smoke but rather foul black smoke (she was following me home in her car). I'll not complain too much if it does end up being the head gaskets for what I got it for.

Preliminary list of things I've found wrong (mostly on the interior) besides the engine:

• none of the switches on the drivers door work, which sucks since you can't roll the window down at the moment.
• cluster has some issues- coolant temp gauge needle is stuck under the stop, the fuel gauge needle is completely off (and sitting on the bottom of the bezel)
• the center console is pretty much shot
• drivers side headlight housing is loose, need to figure out why
• theres a grinding noise when moving on the pass side- don't know if it's a brake dragging or a bearing
• the abs light is on, need to pull the code and figure out where the problem is, with the above it's quite possible the bearing and sensor need to be replaced
• the keyless entry fob's battery backer is broken off, I'll need a new one if I want to be able to use it.
• the front grille is cracked in several places and held together with duct tape

In reply to Ashyukun:

Engine donor! Now we just need a chassis to put it in

The best chassis for this motor is the Fiero. light mods net 13 second 1/4 mile times.

But even the PA's are quick. should be able to manage 15's out of the box.

Finally got the pictures uploaded: http://s1074.photobucket.com/user/Ashyukun/library/PA%20Ultra

When the wheel bearings in my Malibu went bad they would set off the ABS light. They were simple to change but if I bought cheap ones they didn't last long.

Pretty rough. But, it's a very common car, made a lot of years. A lot of that could be sourced in one good JY trip.
Do you have good JYs around by?

Yeah, I had the same issue with the Blazer's ABS & wheel bearing, and replacing them fixed the ABS nicely.

There's a decent number of yards nearby, including one that has like 5 PA's and other cars that I can get things like the steering wheel and wiper motor (which also appears to be dead).

Not a bad choice. My folks had one of those and I drove it a few months. It was like driving your couch. Can fit 5 people no problem and as you said it's pretty quick when it needs to be. Good luck getting it sorted.

After having the car out a few times, I'm unfortunately nearly 100% certain that it actually does have a head gasket issue as the cooling system is being pressurized as I can really visibly see the coolant level going up in the overflow after it's been running and hear it being sucked back in once the engine is shut off. I've already ordered the full gasket set and will be returning the individual gaskets I already ordered (thank you Amazon return policy).

Also ordered the new hubs, though those will be a lower priority than the engine. Unfortunately the head gasket issue means I can't really drive it to the salvage yard to look for parts- so I guess yet again the DeLorean will get used for a junkyard run.

Car is now all transferred and legal, adding another $125 to its cost (though that would have been the case for pretty much anything I bought).

A few new issues discovered this morning- the rear window defroster doesn't appear to work (or at least is was doing jack E36 M3 this morning on the drive in). The climate control unit's backlight is iffy at best. Not sure whether the heated seats are actually working or not- need to check the fuses and see for them and the defroster.

When I started it up initially it also sounds like it may have an exhaust leak near the middle of the car, will have to investigate that when I have it up on stands to do the bearings.

Front struts definitely could use being replaced. Not sure whether I'm going to bother with that though since it's not something too terribly problematic. Will do them if I end up going for flipping the car and not just driving it and then yanking the engine for something else.

If I were looking at swapping the engine into a Fiero, this one (http://lexington.craigslist.org/cto/5459599132.html) wouldn't be bad from the looks of it. Though I suppose finding a non-running one would be better since that price is solidly higher than I'd want to pay.

I don't have much to offer, but you can buy a new case for the keyless fob for not much money. I think mine was about $6 (2001 Regal).

slowride wrote: I don't have much to offer, but you can buy a new case for the keyless fob for not much money. I think mine was about $6 (2001 Regal).

I ordered one from Amazon with the last batch of parts. Hopefully having it programmed for the car won't be ridiculously expensive...

Got started on tearing it down to do the head gaskets. Didn't get all that much done- just jacked it up, drained the fluids, got the belts off and a start on getting the alternator off. Didn't want to go much further since my new phone wasn't fully set up yet and I really wanted to be able to take pictures as I went along to make sure I can put everything back together properly!

The new wheel bearings came in yesterday, so I'm now really just missing the one thing I really need: the kit with the head gaskets & bolts.

The weather was starting to turn bad when I got home yesterday, but I really wanted to get things pushed ahead as far as I could so I braved the drizzle, wind, and dropping temps to get done what I could. I was able to get the alternator assembly and the front pulley assembly/coil packs pulled off before the wind picked up badly enough that it was too dangerous to work under the hood due to the wind trying to slam it shut on me. Unsurprisingly the two plastic elbows essentially disintegrated when I pulled the alternator bracket off, I'll happily be replacing those with the new aluminum ones when I put it back on.

Once the wind got too bad to work under the hood, I decided to get some prep for doing the wheel bearings done, and pulled the front wheels off. There I quickly found at least one of the reasons why the ABS/traction control is offline: the wires for the passenger side front sensor are both snapped, thankfully on the sensor side of the connector. So, one I replace that bearing/sensor combo I should just be able to hook the new one up and be good. In looking things over, the boot on the CV joint on the passenger side is also ripped... I'm debating whether I should replace that axle while I'm already replacing the bearings or not, since it will be a good bit more work to go back and replace it- there was a definite thunking noise when I had the wheels turned all the way to one side from that corner of the car.

I have some time to think it over though- it's unlikely the weather will be such I can do anything on the car itself until Saturday- if I have time to do anything out in the garage today I need to spend it trying to clean and organize, right now the workbench is covered in crap and I have no place to put the parts I need to be pulling off...

The weather Saturday was pretty nice, so I spent about 5 hours or so working on the PAU to try and get the heads out so I could get them to the shop to be gone over.

Overall, things went well- in the end I have the heads out and will hopefully be getting them to the shop over lunch to be cleaned, checked over, and decked if necessary. Getting to that point however was not a lot of fun. It was pretty smooth sailing until it came to having to get the rear (2/4/6) head off, because it meant having to pull the rear manifold off first, which required some considerable manipulation of the exhaust system as a whole. If I weren't worried that the studs would snap, I would have just completely unhooked the downpipe, but the four studs that connect it to the resonator look rusty enough I don't think they'd survive trying to get the nuts loose.

Seriously, if I were designing a transverse-installed engine, I'd make sure it were possible to remove and install the rear head with the manifold still attached. I at a few points gave serious thought to saying, "Berk it." and pulling the whole engine- I honestly think that might have been easier and taken me less time.

I unfortunately have a few more parts to pick up- the vacuum tee on top of the supercharger broke where the line goes to the brake booster, and the rubber tee that is in the middle of the line that feeds the SC bypass actuator largely disintegrated. The top tee I found and have ordered, the other line & tee I've yet to be able to track down... no parts lists I've seen have it on them.

I've also got a decision to make regarding the LIM gaskets. When I was initially hoping this was just going to require replacing the LIM gaskets (which were of course shot, no surprises there) I had ordered a set of the new, improved aluminum-based gaskets to the tune of about $50. After I realized that the head gaskets were the problem, I ordered a gasket set that included everything and was about twice as much- but there were no complete gasket kits for a decent price that included the improved LIM gaskets, just the old plastic-based ones. So, I either need to use both and have the old plastic ones left over, or return the improved ones and put the old ones on the engine but know that they'll fail down the line. Much as I'd like to save the $50, I suppose I should really use the improved ones...

I also found something weird and amusing- while all four tires on the PAU are in fairly good shape, NONE of them match. All four are different brands and tread patterns.

Oh, and one other interesting thing I found (and I have a picture of but haven't uploaded yet...). When I pulled the thermostat housing off, I found that it had a 'gutted' thermostat- just the outer part but nothing in the middle so it would flow freely through at any temp. Don't know if that was done as a way to keep it from warming up as fast with the head gasket issue or what.