i just bought a 97 deville as a second car. and i keep hearing stories
that the Northstar engine is not so reliable.
what are your thoughts about the 96-99 era northstar
thanks in advance for any advice
I've heard there were issues with them from 92 right thru 2005. Mostly head gasket issues. But at significantly higher mileage than the infamous HT41 blundreds. The 2006 and newer ones seems to have those issues worked out finally.
In a word, YES
NO!!!!!!!!!!!! mine has 152,000 miles runs great uses oil between changes , normal keep up on mantenence as anything it will last forever its the other electronics in the car that are costly and fail. and your check engine light will always be on both my cadillacs of that era had engine lights on. good thing they are easy to work on and lots of them so parts are cheaper then 1 might think.
Jessie
I don't want to knock the engine, but there are LOTS of these showing up for sale cheap due to blown head gaskets.
Brian
Head gaskets are just part of life now days. Its not like the old cast iron on cast iron days where they could take some abuse. I think the 3800 was the last cast iron car motor GM made and head gasket failures were rare on those, intake issues were a different story but at least much less expensive to repair than heads.
As for the Northstar its a 18? year old design that is still more advanced than many of the other engines out there. Its high tech, high performance and you dont get that for nothing.
I know this wouldn't necessarily have any bearing on the head gasket directly, but I'm curious if there's any difference in failure rate from the FWD (DTS) to RWD (STS) cars?
I had the smaller Northstar in a Oldsmobile same trouble with the head gaskets at 80,000, worst car I ever owned. Junked it bought a 88 Eldo
northstar engines are slighly better than ht4100,the gm 6.2 installed in the escalade will have varying degrees of wrist-pin knocks even at very low miles,I have always been a Cadillac guy,but today I hit 200k in my 05 town car,4.6,one,repeat one set of plugs,2 ingnition coils,and one tps. thats it!!
Hats off to GM,after killing the product in search of gas mileage,( as a dealer that hated to be forced into foreign cars,you,know usa first) I lost countless $$$ on diesels,V6 fleetwoods,Ht4100,s 4100 no doubt a reference to miles between overhauls,we now have the chevy/escaalde,that is 222 long,79 wide,129.5 wheelbase,and is 30% worse on gas than a 1970!
Progress,and now the Volt!!!
I owned two Northstar Cadillacs, a 2000 Deville and a 2001 DTS. I got rid of both of them because of issues other than the engine (replaced 5 power window regulators and motors in less than 2 years and lots of check engine lights) Shortly after the sale of the 2000 it started having coolant issues. The problem with the Northstar engine is that it is viewed as a disposable part since it cost more to try and rebuild than replace. At least the old Cadillacs had a rebuildable engine. As stated earlier that is why so many are on used car lots at a fraction of the price of a similar Lincoln or Lexus.
If I was having similar trouble with any brand, I would soon change colours.
Some of us have limited finance, and buying a car is our biggest outlay, next to a home.
Bruce. >:D
My 05 Deville daily driver just hit 150k miles, mostly highway. Knock on wood, but all I have had to do so far (3 years, 40,000 plus miles per year) is brakes/ tires/ oil and filters.
Thanks for all the advice. i sold the car this weekend as i kept smelling anti freeze & couldn't find a leak anywhere.
so the headgasket issue was always in my mind. i made a small profit and now i am hunting for a 79 eldo biaritz or a 76-79 seville
(at least the 350 is reliable and easy to work on)
i think if i go with a 90s era caddy it would have to be the 91-93 deville or eldo with the 4.9 ( another reliable caddy/gm product)
thanks for the advice it was real helpful
The 4.5 and 4.9 were the same basic engine as the 4100, they just had all the 'fixes' from the factory instead of retrofitted like the most of the non transverse ones.
If you end up with a Seville be sure to make sure the o rings on the injectors are up to date. MANY stories of fires on those cars from fuel leaks due to old o rings. This goes for all the EFI motors from 75-80, not just the Seville's Olds, the optional EFI 500 and 425 had the same system on them.
I guess I've been very lucky re: Northstar since I currently own a 1999 Eldo ETC and a 2000 Eldo ESC with no knocks/ticks/oil consumption what so ever. I had heard of the issues before I bought but the prices were right at the time. I also have a 1992 Riviera with a 3800 L27. These seem to last "forever" as it has over 146K miles and continues extremely strong...zero issues.
Dave Shipman
Im pretty sure the 3800 was cast iron on cast iron its whole life. Never saw any of the last gen 03?-08 ones so its possible they got aluminum heads but so far no one has been able to confirm or deny that. Its a little extra weight but in my mind the reliability / ability to take a little abuse is worth the extra weight.
Guess I will add my Northstar notes---
We have a 1993 STS in the family bought new... Only has 75K on it... My mother drives the car (80 yrs young) I just replaced the THIRD intake manifold on it.. At times when starting it does a good strong POP backfire so STRONG it actually breaks the intake manifold...
Been to the Cadillac dealer for this a few times.... I replace the intake but they do all the service and checks....
Dad had a 1994 Seville... He just HAD to have it... Bought that one used.. It had a blown head gasket.. I dropped the engine out... Yep, cradle and all out the bottom... Pulled it apart put in the "special" replacement studs and back together... ran fine, so I told him to sell it! That was two years ago. He told me last month he got a note from a tow company that it had been abandonded and towed. Probably lost another head gasket.
BUT -- I gotta say, they sure were impressive when first introduced!
Remember the Deuce Roadster they built with the rear engine Northstar? Tim the Tool Man -- Tim Alan... Wonder where that car is now?
I gotta 96 Eldo(see attched pic).. Baught it in 2000 with 80K. Salesman had it it sat on the interstate.. Car was imaculate. Had to replace the head gaskets on that at 100K back in 2006. It cost me 6 THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!!!!!!! Talk about a absolute nightmare!!! And now at 120K last summer theres a wireing problem that affects how the tranny shifts and doesn't let the alternator charge.. And I smell anti freeze again. I parked it in the shed. So pissed off I can't hardly stand to look at it. The car is like brand new. I never drove it in the winter. I'm in WI we have 6 months of winter here.. The car was hardly ever driven. I acualy think the northstar is WORSE than the 4.1. At least when a head gasket went bad in the 4.1 powered car you didn't have to completly remove the engine, tranny, suspension out of the car to fix it. Mechanicaly the northstar might be good but what good is it when the head gaskets go all the time and it costs many thousands of dollars to replace.?. i'd sure like to know why GM didn't learn from the 80s!!! When the heads are off the northstar you can see why they leak.. THeres very little gasket mating surface around the cylinders.. its a design problem Right now I'm driving a 89 Fleetwood with 310K on it.. It won't die. Its the car I had before I baught the 96 Eldo. Thank god I didn't trade it in.. The engine has never been touched.. But the tranny has been rebuilt once. But all I do is drive it and nothing ever major goes wrong.. All I do is change oil, brakes, tires, normal stuff. I'd like to get a newer caddy but I'm scared. Northstar is complete JUNK. thats for sure. Are the guys that design these engines really that big of morons? Why do they keep letting this happen?
I had a 94 Northstar, nothing but trouble. Oil leaks, check engine lights (we can't renew plates here with that light on), coolant leaks.
Don't forget they need premium fuel, great feature with today's gas prices.
Ours is long gone, we have not missed it. I don't plan on buying another.
This is scary! I own a 2001 Eldorado ESC with 83,000 miles on it, bought almost 6 years ago when it had 45,000 miles. Only issue I have is that a quart of oil has to be added at about 2,000 miles since the last oil change. I have the car serviced every 3,000 miles at a Cadillac dealer and insist on the factory service intervals.
Have never had a Check Engine light come on, at least not yet. Tim
Tim-- You should be good yet.. The magic number for me was when the car turned 100K.. And I stuck to the book on the maintence also. One thing I wouldn't do again is have the coolant flushed.. I had it flushed at the Cadillac garage right at 100K and it wasn't very long at all and the head gaskets went.. Like 3 months.. Leave the old gunky dirty antifreeze in there.. I think its the only chance you got to keep it from leaking.. I've got 9 Cadillacs in my garage and they've all been good to me.. But my newest one is the 96, thats the one that bit me in the you-know-what.... ;)
Chris
For what it's worth.....
"Common problems with the Northstar Engine usually relate to dealing with stripped head bolts. For example, if you own a Cadillac STS engine Deville 97 with a 32 valve 4.6L Northstar Engine with a blown engine, chances are good that by simply doing a pressure test and a spark plug test, you will discover that the head gasket has blown. After identifying what bank it is on, you have to work on getting it replaced. Simply fixing the gasket itself is not a realistic option because of the cracks. Unfortunately, repair, which is a replacement job, is neither cheap nor easy. It is nearly impossible to do it on your own with a simple set of hand tools, nor can you get your local mechanic to do it unless he or she has plenty of experience with this particular problem.
In retrospect, the problem of stripped head bolts emerged after 1996 and gradually disappeared after 1999. Although most automotive experts contend that by 2000 the problem was behind GM, some critics argue that it took GM another 10 years to fully resolve the problem.
What happened in 1997, 1998, and 1999 models is due to poor decision making on the part of GM. The run of GM problems with Northstar Engines began when they moved away from a green silica based coolant and moved to another coolant called Dex cool. This coolant simply could not do the job. The Northstar Engine problems are similar to the problems associated with the Quad 4. In both cases, the head bolts had a fine thread that easily stripped once the engine reached a certain level of inability to effectively dissipate heat. What stripped the head bolts was the chemical reaction between the steel bolts and the aluminum block. Basically, aluminum was too soft. Thus, it is not really due to defective bolts or to defective blocks, but the reaction of one to the other, specifically the reaction between steel bolts with aluminum blocks. Unless the coolant was perfectly maintained, the threads dissolved when the heat became too intense, resulting in the engine blowing up. Once GM reduced the block hardening process that they had previously used, the block and the bolts began to go to wrack and ruin, a chemical reaction similar to applying a flame to a block of cheese. Usually, this problem became typical when the Northstar Engine was closing in on the 100,000 mark. At this point, the Northstar Engine could not stay cool enough to prevent the threads from dissolving.
Resolving the problem was not simple. The entire engine had to be pulled, then drilled, then retapped, and then finally have timeserts installed. This not only took about 40 hours or more, but it cost car owners from $3,000 to $5,000. Moreover, unless the work was expertly done, results were often less than satisfactory. Considering that the models from 1997 to 1999 have a value of $6,000, the repairs came close to the cost of the entire car itself.
A better solution to fixing the Northstar Engine or buying a new engine is to get a used engine where the bolts have been beefed up. Once the bolts have been replaced with head studs, the Northstar Engine begins to work like a charm."
John Tozer
#7946
Sounds like some people would be much happier if they kept the all cast iron 5.0/307 in production, but then the same people would complain about the lack of power and efficiency. Corporate must have figured there would be more interested in a high tech high power engine than just an 'old reliable'. The is/was always Buick, cant get any more reliable middle of the road than the 3800. Dont know how they have been since 08. There are Buicks that share platforms and many options with Cads. Perhaps that is what corporate was thinking figuring they could get the sale either way.
read the tsb's on the gm engines in the big suv's,intermittant loss of oil pressure,I change plenty of oil pumps,not to mention knocks in almost every 6.2 that comes in (escalade) The last real cadillac motor was the 368,which of course was the last downsize of the 425/472/500 series.
fords ? my 202k 05 town car may need a tune up soon(first one) the nerve!
JUDGING QUESTION
In the future how will Cadillac LaSalle Club judges evaluate vehicles within this vintage that have non Cadillac engines because the owners love the remainder of the car? The TEXT indicates that we will remain steadfast because the automobile has a factory incorrect motor. The answer to "fixing" this problem could be to use a different Cadillac engine but lose authenticity points.
Every good man owns a Cadillac. All great men own LaSalles
Quote from: C.R. Patton II #23147 on March 19, 2011, 10:17:51 PM
JUDGING QUESTION
In the future how will Cadillac LaSalle Club judges evaluate vehicles within this vintage that have non Cadillac engines because the owners love the remainder of the car? The TEXT indicates that we will remain steadfast because the automobile has a factory incorrect motor. The answer to "fixing" this problem could be to use a different Cadillac engine but lose authenticity points.
Every good man owns a Cadillac. All great men own LaSalles
Seems to me that in the future, there will be fewer and fewer Cadillacs of this vintage and members around to judge and do the judging.
"Seems to me that in the future, there will be fewer and fewer Cadillacs of this vintage and members around to judge and do the judging."
What makes you say that -- especially the part about fewer members being
around to do the judging? I personally feel these Sevilles (and other Northstar
equipped cars) are great vehicles. My wife's car is a '95 Seville and she loves it.
As far as judges, we're always short at every Grand National
since it's a tough job (with no so great pay).
Just curious what you're trying to say.
Mike