Also, the guy told you no water got in the oil?

i call B.S. on that

magnum engines don’t have pressurized oil going through the head gasket, the rocker arms are fed through the pushrods

old LA engines had a rocker arm rail that was fed oil through the head gasket but not the magnums

i ask the other guys here, is the oil feed hole still in the block?? And if so does the head gasket seal that hole??
that would be the only place on the gasket that would fail and dump oil into the cooling system

also, it would take a little while for the chemicals in the coolant to eat away at the cam bearings, like if an engine had a leaking gasket but didn’t overheat till it lost all the coolant into the oill and somebody drove it for awhile and didn’t check the oil and just added coolant

 

All good stuff guys. The PO suggested replacing the oil pump. I don't know if he came up with that on his own or the guy who replaced the head gasket recommended it.

So is the consensus the cam bearings are worn and is causing this low oil pressure at idle and this dieseling noise at part throttle?

So did the cam bearings wear out due to mileage (174,000) , did the head gasket blowing/overheating cause the damage to the cam bearings or a weak oil pump?

This diesel noise when I let off the throttle kind of sounds like noisy lifters. So far this van is not consuming any oil so at least the bottom end seems OK.

I really like the van and since I got a good deal on it, I don't care to spend some money on it. At this point I'm thinking about just taking it to a mechanic and have him look at it. I'm sure if I put enough time into it I could fix it myself but my time has become limited here lately.

I was considering a used E-series or GM cargo van before buying this one but this one just caught my eye being a shorty and black. GM and Ford stopped making shorty vans ages ago. Plus the ones I was considering had just as many miles on them and they were going for around $10,000. So I think I came out good.

Plus used cargo vans are beat up anyway.

The other alternative was to pay $17 grand for one with less than 100,000 miles on it.

 

Just looked at your pics again and it is a cool looking van! Plus the side windows in the back are not factory Chrysler so a van conversion company installed them.

is the inside all carpeted with cool seats ?

you only paid 1500 for it so if you have to put a new engine in it it is still worth it

i would have bought it for 1500!, dumped 2k into a new 3.9 and it would still be worth 4-5 grand but I would keep it!!

make it into a nice weekend cruiser and everyday driver.

 

Correct. I didn't know it at the time until I saw the van in person but this van was a "low end" conversion van. It's got three names on it. Chariot on the hood, Nautilus on the rear and Arcadia on the sides Why so many names?

I think the actual name of the company was called Chariot and after doing some research they quit doing conversion vans around 2005 and moved from Elkhart Indiana to Colorado to build motorcoaches.

If it didn't have these large windows in it, I'd like to have a mural painted on the side. A guy my father went to school with does great air brushing.

Unlike my Chevrolet Explorer van which is decked out, the Dodge has cloth seats, no high rise roof, no TV, rear A/C / heat and no power folding bench seat. Although I think the bench seat does fold down. I just haven't messed with it yet. The walls are covered with cloth. I'll take some photos of the inside. The carpet is good but there are allot of rips in the side material and cigarette burns.

The guy removed the upholstery from the rear bucket seats and transplanted them to the front. Then threw the frames away. The bench seat came with it. It's suppose to mount in the rear using these clamps. I cut some pieces of metal at work and plan on welding them to the bench seat frame and so I mount the seat directly behind the front two seats. That way I have plenty of room to stick stuff in through the rear but also in case there are more than 2 people. If I need to take the seat out to haul a piece of plywood or need more room, I can easily remove the seat.

The downside. Like most conversion vans, they drilled holes into the metal to attach the plasitc body kit with no consideration as to what this does to the body. These panels trap dirt and the holes they drilled are not touched up with paint so that doesn't do any good. These plastic body panels eventually fall apart. The kit on my Chevy van was literally falling off the van from road debris and everything else that touched it.

The Dodge van has some rust on it but nothing major. It may have originated from up north. But I think most of it was due to dirt getting trapped behind the body kit.

If you look close on the driver's side below the gas filler door but can see it (photo with the rear louvers), not the photo of me with the van. I am blocking the rust hole intentionally!

It seems wherever there was a screw hole there is some rust. There is also some rust up in the floor area near the rear wheel wells. I did not see this when I bought the van but they are not that big. I just need to pull up the flooring to fix it properly.

The frame is in good condition. It's too cold to be doing any body work this time of year so in the spring I'm going to hit all the rust spots with a grinder, then Eastwood Rust Encapsulator and patch up the holes with fiberglass. Yeah I know welding in new metal is best but I have used fiberglass on many repairs with no issues. As long as you stop the rust.

Below is what I think the van looked like with the body kit minus the high rise roof cap. I have not found any photos yet of a Chariot conversion van without a roof cap.

Notice in the white van there appears to be some rust above the side panel.

 

I can't remember if I uploaded any other photos of my van or not after I buffed the paint out on it. I thought about changing the wheels (well because they are factory!) but I actually like these and think I'll keep them. They kind of look like those American Racing Baja wheels but with bigger holes. And they won't rust or tarnish because they are SS wheel skins on top of steel rims. Also note that the guy put BF Goodrich Rugged Terrain tires on the rear. He claims this van will go in the snow better than a Ford or GM because it's got some sort of limited slip differential. Do you know anything about that?

I hauled some cardboard down to my dad's burn pile today and tried to see if it would go up a hill and it started to spin out a bit so I kind of doubt I'd want to drive this thing in the snow. I do like the rear tires though. My plan is to take the tires off the front and replace them with the same as the rear. Then use the fronts for my Chevy van which is going to be needing rear tires pretty soon. Once I do that, I'll have two vans with matching tires!

I'd like to put some 2" wheel spacers on it. Kind of give it that off road look. I wondered if the conversion company altered the suspesion because it looks the van sits up high but I think it's an optical illusion because it's shorter. Also comparing apples to oranges, I think when GM redesigned their van in '96 they made some alternations over the G-series. The front wheel wells on the GM van are moved forward a bit which makes it a bit easier to get in and out. And the rear bed sits lower by about 6" to make it easier to slide stuff in and out. But I like the Dodge van because it feels like a 70s van but has modern features. Some may say it was an aging design but I like old school stuff. Chrysler might be making it today if it were not for that ill-fated Mercedes merger.

I actually like the short wheel base. My Chevy van is on a 1/2 ton chassis and even after I put a large Addco swaybar on the rear it still handles a bit sloppy but the Dodge handles much better. The Dodge is also much easier to park. My wife is always complaining that I park too far away. I find a space without any cars around it so I can just pull it all the way so I don't have to back out.

 

I have a set of 5 lug 2" wheel spacers I modified to work with the van hubs and truck wheels (van axles are narrower than the corresponding truck axles and so have a significantly different offset as well as different hub center diameters... lug pattern is identical) I also have a set of spacer rings to allow them to work with either van wheels or dodge ram truck wheels... If you might be interested, let me know and I'll take some pics and post them in the classified section... I was planning to do so eventually anyhow...

(I wound up putting 8 lug truck axles under my van and so don't have a use for these any more...)

 

I might be interested.

Funny you should mention the difference in axle widths on the vans.

Are the rear wheels on the Ram van spaced a bit inward (like 1-2") than on the front? It may just be an optical illusion. I was going to measure the actual distance between both fronts and both rears to see if the rears are actually set inward a bit or it's just the front fender or quater panel that makes it look like it is.

I was thinking this maybe intentional. Maybe to help the vehicle track better?

So I thought about using 2" spacers on the rear and 1.5" (or whatever the difference is) on the fronts so the wheels stick out the same and look uniform. Although the front and rear tires are different brands, they are the same size.

 

So this morning I got home and my "check guage light" kicked on as well as the oil pressure guage reading zero. I pulled the doghouse off to see what my in-line mechanical gauge was reading and looks like I have around 5 PSI of oil pressure at idle after the guage in the instrument cluster drops from 30 to 0 all of a sudden at idle. According to a quick search on Google, 5 PSI should be adequate or at least the very minimum.

Something that comes to mind. Even though the oil pressure seems high enough when the engine is cold, this engine rattle at part throttle still occurs. My thought was low oil pressure could be messing with the hydraulic lifters causing this racket. But looks like that wouldn't happen until after the engine reached normal operating temperature. It sounds like its coming from the valve covers but because it's so loud, it's hard to identify the source of the noise.

My worst fear is the lack of oil pressure from a worn oil pump has somehow damaged this engine. Even the PO said the engine needed a new oil pump.

Even thought technically it runs fine otherwise and does not smoke or consume oil. So maybe at least the bottom end is still good but the heads and camshaft may need work. I'm starting to think the PO knew more about what was wrong with this vehicle than he was willing to divulge. And tried to make it out like it was something like a heat shield causing this rattle. But did not want to loose a sale.

The broken capped off nipple I found in the glove box he says broke off and caused the engine to loose coolant, I think I found where it's origin. it's a snout that comes off at a 45 degree angle off a pipe in one of the heater hoses. It sits just above the engine. Any idea what this nipple is for? The cap looks like a HELP! cap but it has a factory clamp on it. Is to help bleed the coolant system when filling it? The valve cover gaskets look like they have been replaced but at this point, I'm not even sure if what he is telling me is the truth about the engine blowing a head gasket in the first place. Because looks to me like if the mechanic he got to fix this van was as good as he says he was, he wouldn't have just handed it back to the owner in this condition. Or the owner should have taken it back to him and said, hey this thing is making a god awful racket at part throttle and it didn't do this before.

I'm starting to wonder if this engine started making this rattling sound and the mechanic looked at it and gave his opinion on it and the PO decided it was not worth fixing. So the mechanic just installed new gaskets and buttoned it back up.

But if he does know the true cause of this noise and I offered to pay him what he wanted for the van he should have at least told me so I wasn't wasting my time removing the cat converter to find out if it had melted down.

My wife and kids were with me at the time so I was looking at the van and she was kind of pushing me to make a decision. So I didn't have time to pull the doghouse and investigate further. Otherwise I probably would have been there a couple of hours.

Did I get burned? Maybe not. I have seen vans (Dodge, GM and Ford) with way more miles on them people are asking way more money, like well over $5000.

I'm trying to find me a good independent mechanic in my area who can diagnose this vehicle. Although I try to work on my own stuff, seems like I don't have the time like I used to anymore so looks like I may just have to farm this one out. And spend my time working on some of my other cars that nobody would else would touch because they are too funky.

 

At least the sending unit is in the block.




Yeah that's something else suspicious. When I was inspecting this van before buying it, I removed the radiator cap and noticed it was low. It didn't run hot coming home but after I got home I had to add about a gallon of 50/50 coolant and after topping it off, it looks a bit dirty. Not milky , just old. So seems fishy to me if the oil got into the coolant, the mechanic would have flushed it out and replaced it with fresh coolant. This coolant looks like it's been in there for quite some time.

The broken nipple I found in the glove box does match the one in the heater hose though.

 

The oil pressure sensor will turn on the light if it falls below 7 PSI. Which yours apparently is. That pretty much means it's time for a rebuild.