Our son has 2002 GrandAm. He took it for tires latetly and salesperson told him to “take out a loan”. Question: Should a Grand AM with 100,000 miles have these problems?
1-replace rack and pinion
2- new brakes all around
3- replace head gasket and manifold gasket
4- replace tie rod joints.
This sounds like a gimmick to us. What would be reasonable–or should he sell the car fast?
Well, on a 100k mile car, you can expect to do 2 and 4, that’s just called maintenance.
Number 1, that’s not completely unusual.
And unfortunately, number 3 is something that the GM 60-degree V6 cars are just prone to have fail (not so much the head gasket, but the intake manifold gasket for sure.)
AdKrag,
Mr. Josh is dead-on correct. This GM platform had serious (read engine devastating) issues with the manifold gasket. The “take out a loan” joke would be, IMHO, for a new car, and not one with a 60 deg V-6 since these have this issue and the known “piston slap” issue, too.
-Matt