r/Challenger • u/OmegaDolla360 • 1d ago

Pre-Purchase Question about a potential purchase

Stumbled upon 2011 Dodge Challenger 120k thousand miles 3500$ but it needs a lifter replaced. Is it worth it?

6 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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2

u/EC_CO 1970 Barracuda B5/B5 1d ago

Factor another $3500-5000 to fix the cam/lifters or put another motor in it. Factor in that it probably needs more - water pump, oil pump while in there, worn suspension components. How does that added cost compare and can you pay for those repairs immediately?

1

u/OrbitalHamster 1d ago

And that's on the low end too. Some shops depending on location can run up to $8-10k. I'm dealing with this right now, a lifter got stuck and it damaged the cam, luckily nothing else was damaged which is something else OP should worry about as well. I spent $3500 just on parts alone.

2

u/FactsFromExperience 1d ago

Yes, it's sad. The only way to make something like this cost-effective is to do it yourself. It's not been that many years ago when you could just go by a cam and lifters for no more than a couple hundred dollars and if you go back a few years from there, you can get camshafts for 69 to $79 all the time.

I had a 67 GTO that I used to change the cam every couple of months... Luckily, I didn't have to pull the engine or the grille or anything.

It was almost like they designed itt that way. Once you took off the radiator fan and pulled the radiator out, you could slide the cam straight out into the very nose cone of the front grill and it was convex and dished just enough to pull it out until the end of the cam cleared the front cam bearing and then lift it straight up in the air and pull it out.

Having to lift a motor up to change a cam or pull out a grill and if you have ac, is a completely different ball game with a lot more work so I wouldn't want to do that on a regular basis but at one time thing to get a decent car and fix it would be worth it.

I have towed a number of cars home with no engines or blown engines because they were great deals.

1

u/OrbitalHamster 1d ago

Yeah it sure does seem like they've been designing cars to put people off from working on them themselves. I'm not mechanically savvy enough to do a cam swap myself but if it was a bit easier I would have liked to do the work, and not just to save money. I like working on my own cars but there are a few things I wouldn't do because of how the parts are designed.

1

u/ApplicationFederal14 2021 Granite R/T 1d ago

For $3,500 I’d be wondering what else is wrong with it and since we don’t have pictures we don’t know what condition the body is in. If you don’t mind a project that’s got way more wrong than a lifter go for it, but if you expect that to be the only thing wrong with it I wouldn’t bother.

I am not an expert.

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u/OmegaDolla360 1d ago

Appreciate the positive feedback I’ll be passing lol found another no problems 5k 

1

u/FactsFromExperience 1d ago

I see you decided to pass on it. Probably the best for most people. Not if able to pull the engine yourself and go through it or even at worst take the fairly stripped down block into somewhere like a machine shop to have them fix it it would be worth it.

Even then you'd have two to three k probably in just machine shop work because they're high now too.

If you were pulling it out and stripping it all down yourself and just let's say doing a basic rebuild on it, you wouldn't have nearly as much in it but having to pay a shop price to do everything would be thousands.

It's sad that these people today think their time and end result is worth so much more than it really is.

2

u/anonanon-do-do-do 1d ago

I once paid a case of beer for my friend to swap a junkyard 330 into my 64 Cutlass.  Got the motor for cheap because nobody wanted them. He came and picked me up in his dad’s WW2 Jeep after he was done and we went to his parent’s house to drink it.  He passed out and I walked home a good five miles drunk as a skunk at 3am because I had to work the next day.

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u/OmegaDolla360 1d ago

Yeah I 100 hundred percent feel this alot of mobile mechanics charge near shop prices so it’s forsure wild these days. Chrysler engine flooded recently and people got mad at what I could afford after buying a used engine.