Hey guys:

My 1997 Caravan is going for a timing belt/water pump replacment in 2 days.
I have been noticing that the engine has been buring as much as 2 quarts of oil per 3500 miles.
Today, I saw my wife drive away and the tail pipe had visible blue smoke, not enough for a cloud, but it was there.
Is there a way to slow down, what I consider, to be engine death.

 

I would say that 2 qts in 3500 miles would be very acceptible to me for a motor with 100k. Junkyards don't consider 1qt in 1000miles excessive. Unless you're experiencing huge clouds of smoke or major power loss, i'd just keep up maintenance and go. There are some engine restore products available at NAPA and the like that you use at oil changes that are supposed to decrease smoking and increase power. Good luck.

 

I don't know if this pertains to your engine. The 3.0 Mitsubishi engines used in 91 and other years around them had problems with valve seals going bad. If they had not slipped down into the cylinders at all, they can be removed and replaced from the top. Otherwise the heads will have to be pulled. I didn't want to tackle this so I took it to my main mechanic and he was familiar with the procedure. It only cost me around $300. If he had had to pull the heads, it would have been a lot more. This took care of my oil burning. Now if I could stop the leak...

 

i got a 1996 dodge grand caravan that uses half a quart of mobil 1 every 8,000 miles, and my van has over 242,400 miles on it and still running strong. best vans that i ever bought. i use it to haul newspapers almost 200 miles a night. and my fuel pump just went out this morning.

 

yeah yours is prolly the 3.3, they will run forever


the 3.0s, well they suck, their valve seal design is junk, & they have been known to start going bad at 30K

-greg

 

Ditto on the 3.0. In our family we have about... 3 of these. Well, had 3, now we have 2 (the others sitting in the garage). One ('88 Voyager) would use a quart of oil every 300-400 miles (blue smoke every time it takes off, new valve stem seals temporarily fixed that, but the oil burning problem is back, just not near as bad). The other ('92 LeBaron) doesn't get driven much, but its getting worse. Both have over 130,000 miles.
My grandpa rebuilt the one thats sitting in the garage floor (it was rebuilt with around 140,000 miles, and had about 290,000 miles on it [150,000 new miles] when the tranny went out, and we junked the van, kept the motor), and didn't seem to use much oil. It came out of a '90 Caravan.
I would guess if you have it rebuilt, and rebuild it with good parts, you should be able to get some good miles.

We had good luck with our rebuilt 3.0L .