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1998 Buick Park Avenue Base Sedan 4-door 3.8l With No Functioning Key on 2040-cars

Year:1998 Mileage:103000
Location:

Little Rock, Arkansas, United States

Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
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It won’t start, it smells bad and it’s ugly. Now for the bad parts-

This is a two owner vehicle with about 103,000 miles on it. When we bought it with about 84000 miles on it last year (previous owner was an older lady), it had a known electrical glitch that eventually turned into a known electrical Festival of Glitches. Which is why it won’t start. It has a newish starter, alternator and battery. We have played “find the hidden current draw” many times. Eventually we pulled fuses and relays at random (including the radio, which was a POS anyway) until the worst of the glitches (the fact that the battery would drain in about a day) was vanquished. Or at least moderated. Meanwhile, my son showed the good sense to move far away, and during that time the key was lost. A smooth $135 later, we have a key that unlocks the doors (or the ones that actually open from the outside; two at this time), causes the dash to light up and that turns in the ignition. Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually start the car. The locksmith’s view is that there must be an electrical glitch that is preventing the key from programming. Uh, yeah. He suggested that only the dealer could help, although the overarching tone was “sucks to be you, man.”

We did take it to a local mechanic, who made a couple of stout runs at it. He eventually asked us to stop bringing it in, as it made him sad.

So, the key does everything but start the car. When turned to “on,” there is an ominous electro-mechanical noise from the right rear wheel well, which I presume to be related to the self-leveling suspension, if it has a self-leveling suspension. I’m going with that because it’s less worrisome than many other possible causes of the noise, and ascertaining more info about the noise would necessitate opening the trunk. Which is full of water. We don’t know why.

Which probably has nothing to do with the fact that the driver’s mirror fell off, or that the “twilight sentinel” auto headlight switch sometimes turns the headlights on in the middle of the night, when the car is turned off. Or that the driver’s power window does not work. Or any of the other electrical devices that don’t work. Which would be most of them.

Amazingly, both power seats work, although the switches are hanging on by their wires. This seems to be a GM design characteristic; I noticed it a lot when I was looking for replacement door handles (two of which don’t work, as has been noted) at the junkyard.

There are lots of these things at the junkyard. There’s probably a Buick Park Avenue specific junkyard out there.

When it did run, it actually ran okay. The motor was smooth and didn’t leak anything and the transmission shifted gears appropriately. Which is meaningless since it won’t start, so anybody bidding on it should assume that not only will it not start, but if attempts are made to start it, it will explode. Possibly blowing away the atmosphere and ending life as we know it.

Let’s manage expectations.

It doesn’t look nearly as good as the pictures indicate (we’re not even sure how those dents on the right rear door and rear fender got there, but we suspect wayward snow-sledders were involved), and the pictures cannot convey the overall grossness of the interior. Really, wear a hazmat suit the first time you get into it. It’s not all torn up, but at some point the teenage filth treatment overcame any desire we had to make it look reputable inside. We cave (wet, muddy Arkansas caves), but one of us didn’t always change into clean clothes afterwards. The teenage one who owns the Buick, in fact.

Still, the most the junkyard will offer is $250 (if they come get it). And that’s only because of the newish alternator, starter and battery. And the fact that the tires are all the same brand and have lots of tread. It’s a sad time when the state of the tires is a major determiner as to a car’s value. Before he moved and lost the key, he thought he had it sold on Craigslist for $1000, but that person never returned. That said, for somebody with the time, tools and knowledge to fool around with it (not to mention access to a trailer), it could be made into cheap transportation. Cheap, ugly and possibly unreliable transportation, but transportation. Or not. Really, it could just explode.

Auto Services in Arkansas

Roberts Brothers Tire Service ★★★★★

Auto Repair & Service, Brake Repair, Wheels-Aligning & Balancing
Address: 1415 E Harding Ave, Pine-Bluff
Phone: (870) 534-2911

Precision Automotive ★★★★★

Auto Repair & Service
Address: 2863 S 2nd St, Holland
Phone: (501) 605-1911

Money Tree ★★★★★

Used Car Dealers, Tax Return Preparation-Business, Financial Services
Address: 8700 Warden Rd, Little-Rock-Afb
Phone: (501) 835-8868

Meineke Car Care Center ★★★★★

Auto Repair & Service, Automobile Electrical Equipment, Brake Repair
Address: 2666 Lamar Ave, West-Memphis
Phone: (901) 881-5964

Marks Auto Repair ★★★★★

Auto Repair & Service
Address: 1117 S Oak St, Little-Rock
Phone: (501) 771-2341

Hodges Wrecker Service ★★★★★

Auto Repair & Service, Towing
Address: Wiederkehr-Village
Phone: (479) 968-5111

Auto blog

Buick dusting off Grand National, GNX and T-Type nameplates

Mon, 26 Nov 2012

Inside Line reports Buick is planning to bring back some of the more storied names from the company's past, including the Grand National, GNX and the T-Type. Those cars rose to prominence in the 1970s and '80s to become performance legends of their day.
The new models will reportedly make use of the rear-wheel drive platform that currently underpins the Cadillac ATS and all would arrive as sedans - according to an unnamed source familiar with the initiative. Odds are the T-Type and the Grand National would share a driveline, with honest money being on a new twin-turbocharged 3.6-liter V6 as the engine of choice. Word has it the mill will be good for anywhere from 350 to 400 horsepower.
That leaves only the GNX. Inside Line seems to think that machine could get down the road with some help from the all-new GM LT1 small-block V8. The engineers behind the ATS platform have already told us the engine bay is large enough for to accommodate the big eight pot, and since GM is most certainly working on an ATS-V, a slightly less powerful, less luxurious Buick iteration makes some kind of sense. We can't wait to see these things in the light of day.

It looks like Buick is working on a new Regal GS

Mon, Jun 5 2017

When Buick revealed its Regal-badged version of the Opel Insignia/Holden Commodore sedan and wagon, it left out one significant model, the GS. The high-performance Regal was missing in action, but these new spy photos seem to indicate one is coming soon. It looks like it will be pretty subtle on the outside. Upon close examination, we can see that each side of the front bumper features a much larger grille than the normal Regal Sportback and TourX. The thick upper borders on the grilles also look like good places for some LED accent or fog lights. These larger grilles appear to be the only significant difference to the front, though. On the sides, there are slightly deeper side skirts than those on a standard Sportback, and the rear bumper looks to be lifted from the TourX, but without the wagon's aluminum cladding. One other indication that this is a high-performance Regal is the car's front braking equipment. We can make out a Cadillac logo on the front brake calipers, which shows that this isn't running standard Regal stoppers. As for what's under the hood, it's tough to say, but we don't think it will use a turbocharged four-cylinder as the previous generation did. Instead, we think it may be using a V6. That's a hard maybe. The base Regal's turbo four makes as much power as the old GS, and although Buick could crank up the boost for more power, it could also make use of the V6 it will offer overseas. In the mechanically identical Commodore, a 308-horsepower V6 will be available along with a 9-speed automatic and the same type of all-wheel-drive system as the Ford Focus RS. This option would make the upcoming GS more powerful than the old one, and the new standard model, plus offer all-wheel drive. We would like to see even more power than 308, since the top-dog previous-generation Insignia OPC had a 325-horsepower V6. Related Video: Featured Gallery Buick Regal GS Spy Shots View 15 Photos Image Credit: Brian Williams Spy Photos Buick Hatchback Luxury Performance Sedan buick regal gs

Question of the Day: Best recipient for supercharged GM V6?

Wed, Apr 20 2016

The good old Buick V6 engine was built from 1961 through 2008 (including a decade of production by Kaiser-Jeep) and went into way too many General Motors vehicles to list here. In 1991, the supercharged version of the 3800 was introduced, with a Roots-style Eaton blower on top, and now you can find these engines in just about every junkyard in North America. The 3800 shares a bellhousing pattern with the also-made-by-the-zillions GM 60° V6 engine, which means that it will install (with varying levels of sledgehammer clearancing and/or axle mix-and-matching) into plenty of GM vehicles that never received the 3800 from the factory. That means one thing: engine swaps! An excellent example of this is the 1992 Chevrolet Lumina APV "Dustbuster" minivan, which is a fully caged high-performance road-racing machine that features a supercharged 3800 and 5-speed manual transmission under its long, vacuum-cleaner-snout-like hood. The RaceVan, in Springfield Monorail livery, will compete this weekend at the Michigan 24 Hours of LeMons race with Autobloggers Mike Austin, David Gluckman, and Alex Kierstein at the wheel. My personal choice for supercharged 3800 power, though, has to be the Cadillac Cimarron, preferably the not-so-sought-after Cimarron d'Oro Edition. Some bashing and welding and cutting and pasting and this lightweight Cavalier sibling could have well over double its original horsepower. So, what's your blown 3800 engine-swap choice? Related Video: Auto News Buick GM v6 question of the day questions engine swap