Junkyard survey of 3.0L Mitsubishi

I took a walk through the local U-Pick-It junkyard yesterday morning looking for something for my Intrepid, and since there's nothing finer than a junkyard even on a crisp(!) Saturday morning, I spent a couple hours walking around. This particular yard was biased heavily towards domestic cars and minivans, not too many light trucks or SUVs (and only one LH, sadly...) There were a lot of late-80s early 90s mopars, many with the 3.0L V6.

I found myself looking at every 3.0L vehicle I spotted, checking mileage. I was really surprised to find that many of them were well over 150K miles, and a few topped 200K miles. There were at least two dozen that I looked at. Some of the wrecks had lower miles, of course, but the ones that clearly had just gotten too expensive to repair had made some pretty decent mileage figures. Quite a few were missing their transmissions, so I guess that those were still okay, or had been rebuilt prior to the engine giving out.

So it's good to see that many are getting decent longevity out of what has been kind of a crappy motor for us to maintain with its oil leaks, etc.

I guess the other thing that impressed me (and this was true 12 or 13 years ago when I was a junkyard rat) is that it's strange what people leave in their cars. Cars that weren't wrecked -- so you know the owner likely didn't die at the same time the car did -- with strange things like loads of laundry in the trunk, kids toys in the back seat. One of the high-mileage minivans with the morning WSJ still sitting on the passenger seat. Many cars with still-valid license plates. What are people thinking when they let their cars go? Ok, sometimes when the car quits on the way to work you don't bother to get everything out of it when the towtruck comes. But to just say, ah, the heck with it, so what if the laundry was in the car? Weird. Maybe more of these cases were deaths than was apparent.

Anyway, it's an interesting perspective on the life and death of these machines that we sometimes put so much of ourselves, not to mention our income, into -- to see where they end up. I recommend it.

--Geoff

Reply to
Geoff
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I went to the junkyard for parts and found a Haynes manual for my car in the back seat.

Reply to
Phil Breau

I hope you left it there! ;-)

--Geoff

Reply to
Geoff

I have a Haynes manual for my Chevy pickup ... and also a manual from the factory. The junkyard is the right place for the Haynes manual. :-)

Matt

Reply to
Matthew S. Whiting

I have 96k miles on my 3.0 88 New Yorker. Still waiting for these oil problems everyone talks about.

Maybe it's the Mobil 1 ?

Reply to
Steve Stone

What a lot of these are is refugees from the tow lot. Typical scenario is the poor single mom with kids scrapes together $400 and buys a minivan that has about 2 years of life left in it, then drives the crap out of the thing. A year later she parks in a no-parking zone and when the meter maid finds the van there's about 10 unpaid parking tickets on the thing, so off it goes to the tow lot, and if there's the weeks laundry is in there, so be it. She isn't going to waste time paying the bus fare and the 3 hours of time to go out to the tow lot and pay double the van's worth to get it out of hock, she will just go buy another van. So 2 months later the tow lot finally has got the title forfited over to them and gets their $100 by having the wrecking yard take it.

Ted

Reply to
Ted Mittelstaedt

On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 21:54:50 GMT, "Steve Stone" wrote in ten foot tall digital flames:

My '91 Acclaim's leaving plenty of evidence of its existence on the driveway right now just from 6 years of oil leaks, much less the head gasket going. Just waiting for the funds to build up so I can repair the poor thing.

That said, the mileage figures don't surprise me - I'm over 150,000 miles. Aside from a transmission, new head gasket, and radiator work in its past, the engine hasn't let me down yet, even in the nasty winter temps we were having last winter in New England. It's why I'm waiting to repair the present faults because the whole car is in such great shape I'm not willing to part with it just to inherit another used car's woes.

- D

Reply to
Dennis Busse

Reply to
jdoe

Thankfully that doesn't work in NYC. If your car gets towed, you can't register another car until you pay the tickets, towing fees, storage fees, and potentially disposal fees. So if you have crappy car, your best bet to get rid of it is to drive it to the junkyard, not just park it and expect others to tow is away for you.

------------- Alex

Reply to
Alex Rodriguez

NYC has a far superior subway/rail/bus system than most cities. The poor folk there don't need to own cars.

Ted

Reply to
Ted Mittelstaedt

The 3.0 is a cockroach. It has almost no redeeming features, smokes like the Queen Elizabeth the first time they fired her boilers, and is gutless.

But it will not die, either.

Reply to
Steve

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