Hello,

First post here (although long time reader) and after searching all threw your database I was hoping I could find some answers but actually ended up with more questions. Hopefully you wonderful forum people can shed some light on this.

I have a 1995 Camaro with the 3800 series II engine. It seems to shutter and backfire really hard if I accelerate, but if I stomp on it, it accelerates fine.

It has a obvious water/coolant leak around the intake and overheating issues (as a result of the leak). When I look in the radiator I can see oil floating in the water. Now everything I've read on this says that chances are its NOT a blown head gasket and replacement of the intake seals will fix this problem.

But it also has a "low oil" dummy light come on when its been sitting over night and I start it, if I start it after its been sitting for a few hours, no light.

My initial thought was to replace the engine with another 3800 but when I read on swaps all the guides say "you can get (insert list here) of engines to fit, but the 95."

I priced a rebuild because of this from my local mechanic at $4843 ($3373 of that is the engine) which seems a bit steep.

So my questions are this. First off, do you believe that the shutter/backfire, coolant leak, and low oil all be fixed with new gaskets/seals on the intake? If not has anyone done a engine rebuild/swap on a 95 and is it better to get a new engine or fix the old one?

Thanks for your time.

 

I do not believe the shutter backfire is being cause by the gasket. Most comon cause would be the secondary ignition (coils, plugs or wires) but that is just a guess it could be almost anything in the EFI system or even a position sensor.

Just a FYI the long block 3800 should fit your car. Not that long ago GM still sold a long block for our cars. These are the cars they listed as fitting. What this means is the long block should work. Now if you swap a motor with say a 96 I do not know what you can use but if you strip it down to the long block it should work.

 

Well, an update and good news. The mechanic I took it to seemed to be wrong. I took it to a second mechanic for a new opinion and he believes its just the timing case seals for the water and such. I will install that and see were I stand.

Still on the move to hunt down the shutter problem...possible dirty injectors?

 

Clean your mass air flow sensor. Pull your o2 sensors and your spark plugs see how they are.

 

Just a FYI, It could be you timing chain cover but the intake gaskets are very comon issue. Infact the 3800 was part of a Class action law suit because of the intake gasket defect. It is too late to get any refund anyone who paid for the repair with less then 100K on or before a certain date.

 

Timing case seals all replaced and it fixed all the leaks (water leak around the water pump).

I also found that the Ram Air system wasn't installed right by whoever worked on it last and I fixed that. Helped a little bit with the misfires but not much.

I hooked it up to a computer and it said the misfires were from two codes: a bad egr and fuel fire loop (which I believe is also the egr). Pulled the egr, cleaned the hell out of it and tried again to no success. I'm going to do a full tune-up and see if it fixes the problem before I blow $200 on a new egr.

 

Turns out it was (and you were of course right). When I fixed the water pump seal it pressurized the system enough to expose the intake leaks. My mechanic is concerned the head gasket is blown as well so I'm looking into doing a head gasket and intake rebuild now.

/sigh...this is getting hella expensive to get this car up to par, lol. The last owner treated it like crap, I'm convinced.