Hey all, how's it going? Let me explain in full my dillemma thus far:
Purchased for 1200$ the car was in very decent shape. Body and paint are incredible and still original, interior is holding up well also. Buishings are all seeming to crunch away more and more, especially the rear (it sags) and the driver's side, rear suspension is messed up, the bottom of the sping sits lower than the other side, and the tire keeps losing air :(
other than that, the car was flawless. well, so it seemed. about 8-9000 miles later, serious engine malfunctions seemed to happen. tranny had problems, and for 500 i had her up to snuff. months later the timing belt snapped, had it replaced and she ran strong, perhaps too strong. things seemed to be way too tight, maybe i wasn't used to it. well, this is where it all fell apart. oil and fluids seemed to always be a little low, she smelt a little more, and actually ran hot 2-3 times, which hasn't happened in maybe 9 months since. soon after she ran so hot that a headgasket blew, or melted, and coolant and water seeped right into the engine, and she really ran hot then. well, i had all 4 cylinders regrinded and headgaskets replaced. 1500 later she ran. for the next 3 weeks or so she every once and a while would spout out coolant. one night she dumped all her coolant fluid onto the damn ground, and had to have the hoses resealed. i also bought a water pump and a new coolant cap for the resevior, but the coolant seemed to still come out every once and a while. she seemed to lose more and more coolant and i saw no signs of its escape anywhere. so for about 3 weeks i constantly topped all fluids. oh yeah, the tight feeling was pretty much gone by then, now it was sluggish, slow, and completely unnreliable. then it happened, she popped her top, oil EVERYWHERE, poor environment, i was driving in a damn parking lot too, cool morning, nothing was hot. my mechanic is completely boggled at this whole car. countless pressure tests, temp scans, he even ran it for 3 hours at 3kRPMs, but soon as i hopped in and did my daily driving something always seemed to appear. remember, this all happened AFTER the same nit replaced my timing belt. so to make a long story short, 300 more bucks towards an oil pan, engine cleaning, and hoses and sparks(yea pretty much everything is new except the bottom half of the engine.) well what do u know? she now burns oil, at what can only be considered as movie-like special effects. i don't even drive it, in fear of not just blowing it up, but also getting other cars into trouble with trying to see, yes it's that bad. my mechanic says he doesn't work on the bottom half of the engine, but states that the rings are all worn. even if i did stop her oil burning ways, who knows how much more the engine is damaged now from all this, not to mention the coolant problem still isn't solved of where it's escaping to. So i come to you people with some advice. for what I thought was a wicked steal of a car, turns out to be thousands more and completely useless now :( is re-ringing it with IPD's appx 650$ set worth my trouble, i'm no mechanic so i'd have to pay top dollar for installation. should i just drop in a new engine? or should i call it quits, sell it to some mechanic junky for a couple hundred and move on?
thanks again,
Chris