Hello,

I'm helping my father with his 1999 Monte carlo V6 3100 engine (I think that's it).. 105k miles.

He went to have the radiator flushed and the service station told him there was oil in the water...

He thinks it may be his radiator, I think he is dreaming. I believe it is the head gaskets.

Is there a common known issue with this engine? How difficult is head gasket replacement? Does the head gasket job require pulling the engine? Is it worth replacing the gaskets or is the engine toast? He's retired and on a fixed income... Any suggestions are welcome.

 

I'm a mechanic, and ran into a few 3.1L cars with oil in the radiator, so I called up our machine shop to see if there were any common problems, and they said it could be a number of things, bad head gasket, cracked block, cracked head, cracked timing cover. In my opinion I would put a used engine in and save some time and money. The last time I replaced one it was a little over $100 for the engine from a scrap yard plus labor to put it in.

Unless you happen to have an oil cooler in your radiator, I doubt it, but it wouldn't hurt to check.

 

The 3.1 are notorious for headgaskets. You have a good guess there.