alex2374

Appreciate the response.

I've already filed suit against him in small claims court. I figure it's open and shut, but the courts take their time and I hate that my son is doing without his car either until I squeeze some money out of him in court or come up with it on my own to get the car really repaired.

The last time I posed here was October of last year, after a water pump failure flooded the engine with coolant (I asked for advice on a used engine.) Well, turns out I didn't end up replacing the engine; the mechanic I took it to said the engine looked good and we simply needed to replace the engine parts that had been damaged by coolant. Well, after $6300 and six months at the mechanic I finally took the car back from him for his failure to fix a lingering problem. After returning it to him to repair for the third time, I'm left with a car that makes a grinding noise on startup that goes away after about 2-3 seconds, accompanied by white smoke from the exhaust. What's odd is that this only happens after the car has been sitting for about 24 hours. If I start it more than once in any given day, the grinding/smoke only happens on the first startup. My mechanic could never figure out why this was happening or what to do to fix it, and a Google search isn't very helpful. Any ideas for what could be going on here? I'm not driving it currently for fear that whatever is going on will damage the engine, but I sure would like to have some idea of the problem before I spend more money having another mechanic look at it.

Bought last spring for my son to drive once he turned 16. Just found out the water pump failed and leaked coolant into the engine, which is not anything I'd ever heard of happening before but with some poking around on the forum I now realize is something that absolutely does happen with this vehicle. Mechanic quoted me $8200 for a remanufactured engine ($5500 for the engine, rest for various parts and labor.) That's only slightly less than what I paid for the car a year and a half ago. I hate to not fix it because otherwise the car is in pretty good shape, but I don't want to throw good money after bad either. I saw some older posts suggesting a used engine instead, and just wanted to get thoughts on that; last time I had to replace an engine it was in my car and it was remanufactured, but it also cost me $3000 less to do it on that vehicle. Would really love to get a few more years out of this car though since before long I'll be in the market for a car for his sister, but I don't really feel like paying for the car twice basically.