Reading from other people's rants it is beginning to look like I have a cracked intake manifold. My car when sitting at a stop light, the temperature will rise from around 170 to 180 degrees to north of 210 degrees. It does this on a constant basis and I thought nothing of it until my car broke down on the road today. I noticed a very rough idle while sitting at a stop light and when I went to press on the gas to try and get outta the way I had a weak response. Finally the motor cut out and I had to have it towed. I tried putting more coolant in it but it still had the rough idle. I am going to have a mechanic look at it soon, but I'm hoping to get another 50k miles outta this car.

in 2006, two years after i purchased my '98 grand prix, i began experiencing very rough, vibrating idle and my car would begin to overheat while sitting at stoplights. yes...that quick. temp would spike at about 240 degrees, when i was rolling again it would drop to about 215. took it to the GM dealership where i bought the vehicle...was told mani-intake gasket was bad and would cost me 1600.00 to fix. the myth about mechanics screwing-over women holds true, but i am not a stupid woman...my first car was a 20-year-old '67 camaro that i could do all the maintenance work on myself as a teenager. so anyways, the dealership told me the dexcool was full of oil. i told them the coolant looked like that when i bought the car FROM THEM two years before, which was true. this was my first experience with dexcool and i did wonder why it looked that way, all sludgy and nasty. i never had any problem with overheating the first two years i'd owned the car, and i'd had the coolant freeze-tested several times during regular oil changes, it always tested good. other mechanics advised me that dexcool just looks like that after a while and recommended i flush and replace with regular antifreeze. also at about the same time, my heater/ac blower had stopped working (if i remember right, it was the relay). that cost me 290.00 to replace, and while the dealer was taking 4 hours to do that, i called around and found a cheaper price for the manifold job. i told the dealership to bite my ass cuz i wasn't paying 1600.00 for the mani gasket, had them put it back together, and drove it to the other mechanic... he did the whole job for 685.00, including the thermostat, hoses, etc. it stopped overheating but still had the rough idle. 6 months later...i spring a leak in my waterpump. took it back to the cheap mechanic....he fixed the waterpump but still couldn't figure out why the rough idle. said not to worry about it, he didn't think it was a problem. another 6 months goes by, i start feeling a popping in the front end when cornering. everyone advises that it's a c-v joint. so i take it to a 3rd mechanic...turns out it's the damn hydraulic motor mount. another 280.00 to replace, and a year and 3 different shops to figure out the problem. so...everything goes pretty smooth and car runs great for the last two years. until now. same problems all over again...except this time my ac/heater fan is blowing, but making a screaming/squealing noise on occasion. it now has a little less than 115000 miles. i purchased the car in 2004 with 61k miles on it for $5K, and car is paid off, free and clear. i've put less than the normal 12-15k miles yearly on it, so you'd think less wear and tear. other problems...28 DAYS after i purchsed the car, my driver's side window regulator goes out. window rolls down, won't roll back up, and FALLS down on it's own. dealership wants to charge me damn near 400.00 to replace...said it wasn't covered under their 30 day dealer warranty. i told them to stick it, bought an aftermarket regulator, and had my dad put it in all for 115.00. i also replaced the master cylinder on the brake system myself right after i had the manifold work done, can't remember how much that cost, i think less than 100.00. can't do a tune-up myself cuz i can't reach one of the plugs hidden down up under a bunch of crap and no room to maneuver, and that costs close to 300.00 at my cheap mechanic's shop. i got the car cheap, but it's nickle-and-dime'd me to death. i love my car, but i think it's time for a new vehicle.

My car has over 172,000 miles on it and was running fine until the low coolant light started coming on so I watched the level of coolant in the car and the temperature gauge. The coolant was leaking but couldn't figure out from where. Then one day the temp guage shot way up in a 5 min ride and the check engine light came on. I brought the car right home and parked it. Later that day I put more coolant in it and it maintained proper temperature until I got it to the mechanic about an hour away (he's that good) anyway then the car temp went up as I pulled in the shop the car started to smoke out of the hood and as the mechanic put the car in the shop all the coolant blew out of the bottom of the car, it was like the car waited until it could get there to quit. Sure enough it was the intake manifold. I plan on getting more miles out of this car.

I am yet another victim of the problem of my 1998 Pontiac Grand Prix SE overheating due to a cracked Manifold Intake. The problem got so bad I couldn't drive the car at all. I would drive it about 2 or 3 miles than the car would over heat which really became an inconvenience and a pain in the ass because I couldn't go anywhere and I was not able to go out to find a new job because the town where I live had no jobs to be found. The car died last Friday, October 10, the car went to the big junk yard in the sky and I got another car today which I am sure I will have better luck with since it does not have the infamous 3.1L engine. I had other problems with the car but the manifold intake was the big one. I will never again buy another Pontiac or car with the 3.1 engine...I don't want to ever have to live through that again.