I just purchased a 99 Intrepid (2.7L V6) that has 138,000 miles on it. I was looking for a high mileage vehicle that I could get cheap. I thought this car was a steal for $2800. I took it out on the highway during the test drive and drove it pretty hard. I was impressed. The engine and transmission felt solid. The body and interior on this car are are very clean, and I'm a pretty handy guy, so I felt like I would take my chances with the high mileage. However, after purchasing the vehicle (I know, I know) I have read some consumer reviews that have me worried sick about the 2.7L V6. The theme seems to be a sludge developing in the engine that causes it to sieze. I believe that the car in question has had regular oil changes. Is there anything I can do to help prolong the life of the enginge besides changing the oil every 3,000 miles? Is there a way to tell if the engine in this car has had any work done on it / been replaced? Also, if it were to go out, would it be possible / wise for me to put a bigger engine in it?
Do a google search on this newsgroup, and you'll find plenty of discussion on it (BTW - I own a '99 Concorde with the same engine that now has 125k+ miles on it, and it is running great - no problems).
I think the following will alleviate some of your fears about your particular engine: I think *without exception*, every post I have seen here or on
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forums about a 2.7L sludge failure has been in the window of 55 to 85k miles. This could be due to one or a combination of : (1) Mostly hiway use (i.e., very little short-trip sludge-producing driving) (2) Good mainenance (routine oil changes at closer to 3000 mile rather than 10,000 mile intervals. (3) Luck of the draw on getting good engine (I think this is the least likely of the three since the root cause IMO is marignal lube system design issues).
Since I drive my Concorde 80 miles a day and do the oil changes, I think that is why it is doing so well. I've seen inidications that it was a sales fleet vehicle in its previous life, so it probably had hiway miles and decent maintenance then too.
When I bought mine used at 58k, shortly thereafter, when I found out about the tendency of the engine to sludge up and fail, my solution was to use 1/4 qt. of Marvel Mystery Oil in the crankcase with every oil change, target the oil changes for 3000 miles (in reality it probably has worked out to 3500 miles average), and change the filter with every change using a good filter (I use Purolator Pure One?, but there are many other good ones out there).
If you had fewer miles, I would say to switch over to synthetic, but that would probably be a mistake on your engine *ESPECIALLY* since the primary concern is sludge accumulation. Synth. will break the sludge down fairly quickly and could very likely block the small oil return galleys and valve lifter (AKA lash adjusters)ports and bring about the exact failure mechanism you are trying to avoid. Using the MMO plus oil & filter changes like I suggest will do a more controlled, gradual cleanout. You *could* do a similar thing with synthetic (transitioning over to it by increasing the proportion of synth to non synth, say 1 qt. synth to 4 qts. non-synth, then 2 qts. synth to 3 qts. non synth., etc. until you were at 100%), but that is a personal choice, and there is a risk no matter what you do (some would say let sleeping dogs lie and continue with regular oil with changes at 3k miles).
It is common advice in the Intrepid community to switch over to either the 3.2 or 3.5 engine (I forget which) if you do experience a failure of the 2.7L. IIRC, it would also involve swapping out the PCM. Again, do a google search on this newsgroup - it has been discussed before, with a link to a site for doing the swap (also do a search within
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- they have an excellent search engine, and there's guys there that are intimately familiar with this - one guy there makes a living rebuilding 2.7's).
Bottom line: I think you're safe since your engine has made it this far.
Be aware that that engine has a timing chain (good), but that it is an interference engine (not so good), with the implication that if the chain ever breakes or slips, you could have valve damage. The good news is that, except for the 55-85k mile sludge-related total failures, in which case all bets are off, I have never read of the timing chain letting loose on this engine (i.e., apparently it is good for a couple of hundred thousand miles).
HTH!
Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')
If it's gone this far without failing, it has probably been properly maintained, as in reasonably frequent oil changes. I'd just make sure to change the oil at least every 4K miles or so to prevent the sludge problem. If you do a lot of short trips, more frequent oil changes would be good. Hopefully you engine will keep going for a long time, but if it does fail, it might be worth replacing it with a 3.2 or 3.5, though to do so would require swapping the ECM and would, it other ways, be more complicated than staying with the 2.7. Good luck.
Thanks guys! I feel better now, although the car is out of service at the moment. After three weeks of driving 50 miles a day with no problems, the battery light came on. Shortly after that my headlights, dashlights, and radio went out while the car was running. At first I suspected the alternator, but I checked it on the car with a voltmeter and it seems ok. I've been putting off testing the battery (because this happens while the car is running), but I'm going to give that a shot tomorrow and hope that's the issue. After reading a few posts it sounds like a bad battery could cause some funky things to happen while the car is running in these cars. Does anyone know if the alternator could be giving me intermittent problems, as in it only works part of the time? I thought when alternators went bad they died completely.
Based on my hanging out on Chrysler- and LH-specific forums and ownership of a Concorde for a over 3 years, I would say that an alternator failing on these cars is *very* rare (don't know that I've ever seen a post about a failed LH alternator). When things start acting screwy on the dash on these cars, it's almost always a battery problem. They don't act like other cars I've messed with over the years with charging system issues.
Just to be safe, check your battery connection. There is a direct connection from the battery to the alternator, so the only places for a bad connection to the alternator are at the battery and at the alternator.
Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')
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