[War_Wagon]

Those Northstar cars are nightmares. They are great when they work, but when they fail, which they all do, they are usually not worth fixing. At my buddies old shop a kid came in, he had got money from his parents and blew it on a Caddy. Paid $4500 for it, bought it from "a mechanic, so it has to be good, right?" Ya, theres a reason the mechanic got rid of it ha ha. Had it a week and it was blowing so much steam out the tailpipes it looked like a James Bond option. My buddy tells him, don't fix it, sell it cheap, take your loss, buy a Civic and move on, which was the exact right thing to do. Nope, kid wants to fix it. Pull the cradle to drop the motor, pull the heads, send them to the machine shop and one is cracked. At that point the parents stopped paying for their kids bad choice in used cars. Long story short, the car went from the hoist to the scrap truck still apart, and the kid still owed money for the work it took to get to that point!

I'll edit this with some good cheats that make things the easiest job you can do. '93-'02 Camaro fuel pump. They die at 180k-200k KMs, and you have to drop the exhaust, gas tank etc etc to get at them. Or, cut a hole in the floor of the cargo area and do it in about 20 minutes. Same goes for '92-'99 GM pickups - ya you can take the time to move everything and drop the tank, or just hack a hole in the bottom of the box. Usually covered by a box liner anyway. Things to look for if you are looking at a used car - if you see that then you know someone like me used to own it ha ha ha.