1998 Chevy Cavalier - Driver Door Lock Sticks

Hey Bob, some time ago I was healthy and had a good job that paid well, but I worked 50 to 70 hours a week! My 1987 (i think) Taurus was like a mini Lincoln Town Car, and I loved it! Within the first month of buying it the head gasket blew out, I did remember hearing something about this being a problem when I was looking at it on the used car lot. I bought any way, like I said it was like a mini town car, black with all the extras! I had talked the dealer into a 90 day warranty so they fixed it. Oh, back to my point, when I bought it their was 74K miles on it, then 4 years later-and a year after I got it back from my EX-wife after the divorce, it had 114K miles, but it was paid for! This is when it threw a piston rod through the block!! I had the skill to rebuild a motor or put in a used motor. This experience came from the Vega I had in collage (really by the time I graduated I had had gone through 4 Vegas progressively improving my skill). So when the motor blew I could use my skills and repair it, what should I do? I had more money than time so I had a repair shop replace the motor with a rebuilt Jasper motor. So for $5k I had a almost new car and life was good! About 2 months later I was hit head on, the car was drivable, it just looked horrible in the front. I was extremely POd when the insurance company would not consider the new motor in their evaluation for repair, so all I received was $5K because that was the 'book value' for retail value! My choice was except the checked for a totaled car that they would take, or sign over the $5K and they would let me keep the car! I was bummed! So should I have sold it with a bad motor and buy another car or did I do the right thing, and consider it was bad luck? Perhaps you may consider this as well?

Just for fun, Bubba

You should have dragged the person out of the car that hit you, and beat them till they looked like your poor Taurus.

Kidding. Only kidding.

If you had that much hands on experience, I would have thought that taking the insurance company,s check, minus the scrap value, and keeping the car might be worthwhile. Use the cash to buy replacement body parts.

I bought an 89 Taurus wagon at an auction for $800. It needed head gaskets also. My wife loved the car. We drove it till we had 150,000 miles on it. Then the trans went bad. I should have burned it to the ground that day.

I have rebuilt my share of automatics in my life, so one more should not be a big deal. First of all to remove the trans on these cars requires hanging the engine/transmission assembly on a sky hook, or building a set of braces to hold it up while removing the front sub frame. Then unbolting the trans from the engine and removing it. I replaced all of the wear parts, all of the seals and installed all of the available upgrade kits offered. When I put it back into the car, It would act like low transmission oil pressure when first put into any forward gear. This became a reason for the wife to hold the gas to the floor to speed up the gear engagement. I gave up and brought it to a "friend" that had a tranny shop. $950 later I am told that my case was bad, and that he replaced the case with a later year case and modified the wiring harness to make it work. The "no engagement" problem came back again as soon as my friend closed his shop ( 1 month) At this point I decided to replace the motor and transmission with a junk yard setup. I wound up with a 95 model with a 3.0 instead of a 3.8. When I was done, I had more loose wires than I could count. I had drivability, and reliability problems every day.

Like I said, I should have burned it to the ground the first day the tranny was bad.

yes spray lock graphite in the door lock and take some chassie grease and lube the door latch in the door