Sherman Bird
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2019
- Posts
- 2,386
- Reaction score
- 4,682
- Location
- Houston, Texas
- Ram Year
- 1998
- Engine
- 5.2
I'm thinking, that in today's world of manufacturing, combined with Fiat's extremely poor quality issues going WAY back, metallurgy from the annals of Italian quality from the old country, might be at the root of all these ailments in the engines.Thanks for letting me know the "real world truth", I wasn't aware. I only keep up with the fake world truth.
All manufacturers have flaws. That's a given. There are plenty of Pentastar failures to commensurate my post.
Besides, we can't talk about the 3.6 on this post, or somebody will get upset. This is a HEMI post and only HEMI posts are allowed.![]()
Back in 1977, GM began reducing the amount of nickel in cast iron cylinder heads and engine blocks to save money. The results were cracks for no apparent reason in coolant passages leaking coolant into the cylinders and crankcases of new car engines.
Later, the casting of all aluminum engines (Northstar) was rife with coolant seepage to the outside world, and into other forbidden places within the engine. Their engineers came up with pills made from walnut shells, ginger, pepper, and a few other ingredients to plug up these points of seepages. Ain't THAT a kick in the head?!
I wonder if the old school Hemis were so riddled with cam/lifter failures? The predecessor of the 3.6 was an engine design (4.0L in-line 6) from Hudson/Studebaker/ AMC. Those engines also had cam/lifter failures after FCA took over.
The 3.7L/4.7L engines from the Mercedes era were from a basic 1960's Mercedes design, but they had their unique problems.
MAYBE the curse isn't from the materials these engines are made from so much, but the fact that they are laden with EEC computer systems which require extreme heat, and are capable of self destruction due to the algorithm of keeping a stoic of 14.7:1. come hell or high water. I've seen exhaust valves that looked like someone plasma cut them from the extremes of cylinder heat/ leanness, ala the computer EEC parameters.