1997 Chevrolet Venture LS review from North America

Only listing what I think would not be normal wear and tear at that certain mileage or expectation:

Eats front brakes too quickly.

Entire A/C system at 85,000 miles.

Passenger Power Sliding door every 2-3 wks needing fuse resetting until module needed replacing at 90,000. Dealer wants $450. Bought the part off internet for $50. Trying to wire it up now.

Excessive front tire wear including needing after-market toe/camber add-on in order to do front-end alignments every 6 months to still keep the wear to a minimum.

Rear brake lights intermittent caused by a short in a poorly designed weatherproof plug. See AutomotiveForums. com for cheap fix.

Tranny went at 95,000mi.

Intake/Head gasket repair at 110,000. Stranded 300 miles from home. Switch over to green coolant vs. that DexCool (a.k.a. DeathCool) as soon as

you can. See Automotive Forums for more on that. Replace your radiator, t-stat, and water pump as well when, not if, your intake gasket fails. Do the heads as well while you are in there if you had Dex-Cool in before the intake gasket went. The Dex-cool is known to change makeup and gel or similar if not changed every 15,000 miles. Once you overheat it puts much stress on the entire cooling system and may cause other components or their seals that see coolant to be compromised and may start leaking shortly thereafter. That's why the water pump had to be replaced in mine as well as a few secondary coolant hoses. Dex-Cool change every 50-100,000 miles is wrong.

Lifter noise at 100,000 miles which caused a stuck lifter, loss of power. 3 oil changes with the last qt being Risoline (the other oil treatment products for lifters did not work) all within one week cured the stuck lifter and avoided hundreds in repairs. Every other oil change since I use the last qt being Risoline.

Oil leaks around pan and near pan at 120,000 continuing now as well.

Van is under-powered, not as reliable as it should be, intake leak should have been a recall notice, as well as rear brake light shorting out. Should have second rom map lights. Start adding Risoline every other oil change, avoid long climbs, change tranny fluid and filter every 15,000 miles.