[The engine was replaced only 14K miles ago (as the story goes, but there are receipts...), due to a failed timing gear.
Timing gear? Didn't only dukes have a gear driven cam shaft?
V6s have two gears - cam and crank - and a chain. Never heard of a timing gear/chain taking out a 2.8, beyond "it won't run anymore" but, nonetheless, that was the story.
Sounded a little wonky to me, too, but there's a couple of pages of receipts for engine parts, so it was obviously rebuilt or replaced for
some reason. (Maybe the dealer spun a good tale, in the name of capitalism, and profits.)
So the engine has 14K on it, and the transaxle was replaced, some time after that. It's got a NOS transaxle that came from Jeff Ianatello (aka Pontiac Jeff.) I also have another NOS transaxle that came with the package. Still has the Quad 4 bellhousing. Has 3.94 FDR.
It occurs to me that the original owner may have just beat the dog-crap out of it, and broke - or wore out - a bunch of stuff. But it appears that all of that got replaced, anyway.
(The guy I got it from did a bunch of work on it. I've got those receipts, too. Lots of "Rodney" stuff)
So... as they say, we shall see.
The tires are 18 years old. <shudder> But they don't look compromised.
