Re: Engines that are prone to sludge

holycow@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> Bill, I used to be a Rep for Chrysler and back in 2003 we had a meeting
with
> Walker exhaust. Talking with the engineer, he stated that because the
> exhaust system is aluminized or treated with stainless, people think
there
> exhaust last the lifetime of vehicle. He then said the actually engineer
> them to onliy a liife of 80,000 miles. He said the mufflers are shot on
the
> inside. They study the used exhaust by buying them at scrap yards. Good-
old
> Tenneco...

Yeah - hah!  The "screw the consumer" philosophy works great until your 
competition or the original manufacturer starts using a "make it last 
the life of the car" philosophy, in which case the "screw the consumer" 
company deserves a huge downturn in business.  He who has the last
laugh...

By the way. Chrysler determined the PVC system was causing a sludge
> condition, and redesigned it in the later 2.7. I think it was in 02 or
03.

They added a heat exchanger to the pcv hose (steals heat from the heater 
  loop) to keep the blowby from condensing out into the hose and 
clogging it up - that was in '00 or '01 - I added that heat exchanger to 
my '99 Concorde.  They may have done some internal things too for better 
breathing.  It's hard to tell from the LH car forums if the '01-'04 2.7 
is less prone to the problem, but I haven't heard anything on the later 
platform that uses the 2.7 as its base engine, and I think they've been 
out long enough to where they'd be getting failures if that were the 
case (60-80k miles is the usual failure window) - probably means they 
fixed the problem.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my 
address with the letter 'x')