Blog Post #1

  Hi everyone! So this is my first post.  I've made quite a bit of progress since I drug the van home in August.  I bought this thing off facebook marketplace for $400 (clean title), from a guy who buys junk cars for scrap. I saw the van in the background of his add, and negotiated a (low) price with basically no info.  I had been searching for a chevy express van to convert into a camper already, so I knew what type of van I wanted. In my state, anything 20 years old is eligible for inexpensive "historic" tags so this 1998 fit the bill. Buying something in this condition would probably not be the best idea for everyone, but for me it works.  A little background about myself, I'm in my 30's and have been fixing (mostly cars) and building things since grade school. It's something I enjoy doing, and I work on mostly my own stuff.  I suppose if I had to fix other people's junk full time maybe I wouldn't like it so much.  Anyway back to the van.  So as it turns out the engine had a major problem.  The van has 143k so I was hoping it just sat abandoned and needed a battery (yeah right), but after some disassembly it turns out it was much more.  By the way if you need a battery, I promise Walmart has the best price every time.  The 1 year warranty batteries are probably the exact same as the others, and you're just paying for the warranty otherwise.  I've never had a problem with any of them.  So about the engine, the diagnosis was, lower intake gasket failure allowing water to seep into the oil contaminating it. The previous owner had been adding water instead of antifreeze and had let it freeze cracking the engine block.  I got the engine to run initially, and there was no piston or rod knock so of course I didn't know the block was cracked right away.  I definitely wasted a bunch of time thinking I could take the intake (and then heads) off for gaskets. After I noticed the crack on the block I pulled the engine out. Here are some pics of the engine and disassembly.