Driving to my parents house today in our Montana minivan, the low coolant light came on. Thought that was odd since I had just checked it, and it was full. Then it started running very rough, and the service engine soon light came on. Then blue and white smoke from the exhaust, and the temp gauge goes quickly to the red. Luckily we were on my parents road, so I shut it off and coasted the rest of the way. You guessed it, blown head gasket. Anti-freeze in oil. It's done. So car shopping we go. With our family situation, we HAVE to have at least a 6 passenger vehicle with the HHR, so a second HHR is out of the question We didn't want to spend a lot of money, just something to get us by for a couple of years. What we found was a 2004 KIA Sedona mini van. It only had 32,000 miles and was in very good condition. It has new brakes, new tires (Yokohama), 30,000 mile maintenance including oil and trans fluid change and coolant flush, and NO DEX COOL!. Also still has remainder of the 100,000 warranty. Ended up paying $9,995 with them towing our van from my parents. I feel like we got a great deal, especially given the circumstance we were in with a dead trade in. I've never been very enthused about foreign cars, but I am sick of GM v6 engines that keep blowing head gaskets. We have replaced the head gasket in that van every 60,000 miles, which is unacceptable. I will NEVER own another GM 3.4 v6. So far I really like the new van. Drives great and has plenty of power. I'm just happy our old van got us to my parents. We had our two kids, two nieces and a nephew. It would have been very bad to be stranded on the side of the road with all those kids.

 

Do you mean a 2004 instead of a 1994? A 2004 would make more sense for the miles and warranty?

 

Yeah, was Kia even around in 1994?

But glad to hear you made it to your destination, Doug!

 

Yes, 2004. Fixed

Sorry, I'ts been a long tough day

A blown up van and 5 kids under 9 will do that to ya.

 

Hope the new one works out. It's sad that some foreign cars seem to last longer than an american one.

 

Was it the head gasket or the lower intake manifold gasket?

The 3.1L and 3.4L V6s were notorious for lower intake manifold gasket issues.

The lower intake manifold gasket issue is one of the main reasons why I got the HHR instead of the Equinox. There were other reasons, but I was burned twice with GMs 3.xL V6 motors...wasn't going to happen a third time.

 

Hope you checked under the oil cap on that Kia for oil sludge. When I was working at Carmax, nothing sent Kia/Hyundai products to the auction lane faster than sludge under the cap. They may have 100,000 powertrain, but you better have every maintenance record from the previous owner or they'll never honor it.

I do kind of wonder why the 3400 FWD engine turned out to be such a kludge. The older 2.8 and 3.1 60 degree engines were wonderful engines, then the 3400 turned out so bad. The 3800 was still a great engine, though. I'd buy any car with a 3800.

 

where are the pics?!? are you gonna do any mods?!?

 

Some models/engines are bad mechanically. I had a 91 Berreta GT, my first car. Grandparents got it for me. There rule was it had to be a 2 door car, do to study that found my people in teen driver car higher crash rate. Anyway it had a 3.1 v-6 engine. had to get different engine because of chip out of engine, size of pea Tried trading in for different car my S-10, dealer said only take $200 for it because of notorious engine problem of 3.1.

 

Agree. I had a Grand Am with the 3.8 and it was very strong and problem free for all 180,000 miles I had it. I would defintley buy a 3.8 again.