Why are these vehicles so indestructible?
>my grandmother had one that she let her stoner daughter drive everywhere and it survived until she just blew the engine because she drove it up and down pot-holed dirt roads all day every day for several months straight without maintaining it when it already had over 200k miles on it
It's impressive it lasted even two weeks with the treatment she gave it. My grandparents were then dumb enough to lend her their pickup truck and this one only lasted two weeks because she put 7,000 miles on it in those TWO WEEKS and it couldn't handle the dirt roads like the Astro before it
>my uncle has one with 400,000 miles on it
Why can't Chevy make any other reliable vehicles? For crying out loud, this thing even beats Hondas and Toyotas in reliability. So why is every other vehicle made by GM pure garbage?
The only good GM
Statistical anomaly. They had a pretty abysmal reliability record and are one of the shittiest cars I've ever had the displeasure of being in.
hmm. I'm actually looking it up now to see if the two I had experience with were as you said, but so far it seems to be that the general consensus favors me.
You may have just had bad luck as opposed to my family's good luck.
My parents had two. A 93 and a 04. The 93 is still kicking around in georgia even after an accident. Had 200k+ miles on the body but a rebuilt engine because a tech ran it without oil. 04 is probably still around but we had to do 5k worth of repairs in the last year.
>head gasket
>water pump
>rad
>transmission
>a/c compressor
right at 140-150k
>leaking power steering
>broken radio
>broken window crank
>broken heating and a/c
>broken ABS
and finally...
>broken transmission
Great starter car for drifting in gravel, though.
that sounds like the GM i know
I'm not gonna lie growing up I thought this was the most sleekly designed minivan on the market. My family owned a first gen astro and I was mad jelly of the later ones like in op
My crazy Mormon genius strange uncle had one (he has 9 kids) that he used as a work transport. He works all across the country doing computer work (reorganizes assembly lines for Toyota Mitsubishi etc and manages the team that writes software that integrates states budgets so all the state paid employees checks come from the same place). I believe he said it had around 750,000 miles when he got rid of it. I remember dad commenting how it was a good van when it had 450k on it. Uncle now has a fleet of Buick lesabres for him, wife, and kids.
Growing up we had a 97. The interior was comfy as fuck but it was very unreliable. Ever tried to work on one? The engine bay is miserably cramped.
An astro was my childhood vehicle, it was dead reliable. We never had a single problem with it, because my dad is super religious about maintaining vehicles. It's now my uncle's and he's taken it on several trips from Texas to Cali, Colorado, and Seattle with a fuckhueg trailer that easily weighed 15-20 thousand pounds full of car parts or towing a car, on the bone stock 4.3 and 4L60. It absolutely should have broken down and begun rotting away a long time ago, but it's still chugging along.
Park for the course with vans. They're all cab-over.
Bro, I think you mean 5k lbs.
Nopenopenope. I don't have a picture but it was absolutely massive. 4-5 feet taller than the van itself and much longer, and filled with shit like transmissions and engines, among other stuff. The trans did start to overheat a lot, but he stopped every hour or so to check its temperature with an infrared gauge and let it cool before heading out again, and changed the fluid right before and after the trip.
bump
Garbage.
What needs replaced / fixed
>4l60e, 2-3 slipped so I installed a corvette servo; now the torque convertor whines / slips
>Intake gaskets
>Brake booster
>AC lost its charge
>Both bumpers, they're completely rotten due to poor design
>Hitch snapped in half
>Door lock actuators
>Window regulators
>Driver side door pins
>Leaking front main
>Fan clutch
>Motor mounts
>Transmission mounts
What I've replaced
>Transfer case
>All 4 plastic door handles, only the sliding door didn't break during winter
>Hatch lift support
>Radio
>Brake lines all around
>Fuel pump
>Fuel lines
>All 3 u joints
>Rear diff cover
>Both front axle seals
>FL & FR wheel hubs
>FL & FR CV axles
>FL & FR upper/lower control arms/ball joints/bushings
>FL & FR inner/outer tie rods
>FL & FR idler arms
>FL & FR sway bar links & mounts
>FL & FR brake calipers
>Rebuilt drums
>Shocks all around
>Oil cooler lines
>Oil pan gasket
>Alternator
>Starter
>Distributor worm gear
>Blower motor
>Blower motor resistor
>Heater control panel - lost everything but feet for vent setting
>Passenger side mirror glass fell off
One day I'll write this all out as this thread has appeared numerous times. I'm sure I'm missing stuff. It's a never ending battle.
We things weren't necessary. The front end rebuild wasn't supposed to be a complete rebuild. Only thing that was still in great condition ended up being the drag link. Everything else was loose.
GM a shit.
>my grandmother had one that she let her stoner daughter
So your mother?
Forgot
>Fuel pump
>Power steering pump, however it ended up being a bad o ring
Tempted to review my receipts now.
>fleet of lesabres
Those things were fucking tanks
aunt
You got a lemon or you fucking suck at cars.
t. gm's marketing team
> indestructible
> engine blew up
Are you retarded?
Yep. I'm making the big bucks selling Astro's to people on Veeky Forums.
There's a reason GM needed saved.
Sure as fuck wasn't because they made quality vehicles.
Goong over potholes won't "blow up" the engine
Yes they are.
One has a tow hitch and is the dedicated trailer puller...
Yes they are.
It will with a GM product.
>Tfw my junkyard 100$ 88 Ford ranger has 636xxx miles on it and I ran it 500 miles with no tranny fluid
They really,really don't make em like they used to...
>Transmission runs on pressure from fluid.
>Vehicle literally won't move with no fluid, as there is no pressure.
doubt
o
u
b
t
That's pretty funny, when I blew the transmission I took the drain plug out and the only thing that came out was metal bits.......
1988 kiddo. They didn't have fuckin dials to shift back then yaknow....
Not to mention it was a manual. Autofags wouldn't know this.
Just because there's no reading on the dipstick means it's completely empty.
Automatic hydraulic transmissions have been around since the 1930's.
You never specified whether it was an automatic or a standard transmission.
GM makes the best vans. They're heavy as fuck but durable as hell
>Tfw my junkyard 88 Ford Tempo has 945,000miles and didn't even need coolant or gas or oil or a battery and I put over a million miles on it
God bless Ford, so ford tough better than anyone except Toyoba
Dad has a 97 Safari
It's clean af but the starter bolt broke a while back but he still uses it as his daily. I learned to drive on it too.
>Air cooled
>Surprisingly good internals
>Crank/push start
How many alternators have you burned up?