How long can a 318 live??
 

I am not a big fan of Chrysler products, but I have had several conversion vans, and now have a Jeep with a 318. I think this is probably the most durable v8 ever made. My last conversion van had 229,000 on the clock when I junked it, and the motor still ran like a swiss watch. I had an older Dodge van, ( it was a clone of the Beastie Boys Van), and it had something like 305,000 on it when I got rid of it, this motor also still ran great, . I now have a Jeep that just turned 231,000 miles. The motor makes 50 psi. of oil pressure, uses minimal oil, and runs spot on perfect I have serviced this jeep since about 30,000 miles, and a never even had a valve cover off. (it ate two tranny's though)
I think in my entire automotive career, I have replaced only one 318, and that one had an oil cooler line rupture, and starved the motor of oil. I have replaced hundreds of small block Chevy's, quite a few ford 302/351/460, and I have never seen a Chevy Big Block make 100,000.

They're classic motors. The old Mopar slant 6 and the Jeep 4.0L L-6 motors are also bulletproof designs that are legendary for durability.

I had an '85 Dodge truck in high school. It was amazing to me how something with such a large displacement could get such poor MPG, while also not having any power. In its defense, I'm sure the 2-barrel carb and smog equipment didn't help.

Yeah, I had a buddy with a 318 duster. I suspect his lasted forever too. Of course, when you've got a V-8 putting out 6cyl power, the motor isn't having to work very hard. They can be made to put out respectable power, I think.

My second car was a Dodge 1500 with a 318. I worked on it during auto shop in HS and eventually had that sucker eating tires alive............until I rolled it with almost 200k on the clock.

Nice......all through high school I had a 79 dodge van with a 318, slapped on a 4 barrel holley, a couple cherry bombs and swapped the rear end with a posi when I blew it out draggin at the "strip" (rt.422 by our local mall in ohio).....that was a long ass time ago, I gave the van back to my dad who sold it to his neighbor in cleveland.....it's still running.....it had 300,000+ on it in 91 when I gave it up.....
I would need to start a new thread on all the stupid **** we did with that thing :)

I'll let ya know when Peggy gives up. Talk to ya in a few decades.

Most of you are going to be seeing just how long a car will last.

Thats sincerely good news. My 96 GC just turned 120k miles. Have owned it for 8 years and the last 80k miles. No worries until just recently. The darn Anti-lock warning light is on and I can not find whats broken. Likely the computer part, but probably too expensive to change compared to the value of the whole car. Plummeted is an understatement. Otherwise my only grievance is the colossal thirst of that primitive iron V8. With Swedish gas prices its ridiculous.

How do you reach the light (if you want to kill it)?

Sorry for hijacking and trolling for advice.

Just look at my sig, Tabs, I am not a stranger to driving old stuff. I like it better. I work on new, I drive old, that is a choice not a mandate

My Chevy 305 just turned 275,000 miles. It runs perfect. I am shooting for 300,000 miles in 2011. I have ownd the car since 1991.

I fired up my 318 yesterday. It hadn't been started in over 2 years, but ran like a champ. It has 245K miles.

The 318 can be hopped up, but it's pricey.

That's the traditional reputations...Ford & GM had the better body quality, but the MOPAR drive train was top notch.

My older Grand Cherokee 'ZJ' (1994) w/ 318 had 150k mi when I traded it. Still going strong. I should never have traded it, best quality truck/SUV I have ever owned. :(

My current 2002 'WJ' Grand Cherokee w/ 4.7L has 196,000mi on it. The drivetrain has been flawless until now, it needs some attention. Some other parts of the car should have given me more before failing....

My '93 has 210K on the original engine and trans. The 318 uses about a quart every 5K miles, when I got it from my dad it was using a quart every 500 miles. It turns out that a gasket on the bottom of the intake manifold fails and the engine starts sucking oil out of the galley. With that fixed it runs like a champ!

Markus- It is pretty easy to pull the cluster and remove the light but with all of the GCs in the junkyards in the US it's just easier to put in a used computer. The solder joints crack over time and cause the problem you are seeing. If you'd like me to find one for you and ship it I can do it cheap for a fellow Pelican. I can probably get one shipped to you for 50 euro. Or you can pull the light.

Back in December of '07 I was rear ended on the interstate at a dead stop by an 18-wheeler in my '90 Jeep Cherokee. It was totaled but still drivable, albeit crooked, strangely enough.
It had that 4.0L 6-cylinder in it that must have been one of the best engines ever built. That thing had almost 300k miles on it, still had about 40lbs oil pressure, didn't smoke, ran like a top!
The trouble with the ol' girl was that on icy cold mornings she would be slow in starting... I assume compression was low, but if the temp was above 28-degrees, well, she started like new.
It did kill three coolant bottles on me in the three consecutive Summers, and the electrical system had Gremilins we couldn't kill, but other than that it was a great vehicle. I hated it like crap when the junk man came to pick her up 'cause the insurance check I got wouldn't come close to replacing such a good running SUV.

Here is a true story, but I will only hit the highpoints to make it brief.

Around 1992, I bought a 72 Dodge D100 from a farmers pasture for $200. It was cheap because the engine was missing.

At the time, I had already been tinkering with Mopars for about 7 years. I had several old engines and transmissions around the shop.

I took one of the engines that had been sitting behind the shop for "who knows how long" and put it on an engine stand. I pulled the valve covers, spark plugs, and oil pan. After the sludge had drained, I used Gunk and a power hose to wash it out.

I put the pan and covers on with new gaskets, and put it in the truck. I installed new plugs, wires, cap, rotor, and carburetor. I filled it with oil, primed the carb, and started it up.

It smoked like a tire fire for about 4 months, then finally settled in. It probably had some rust on the cylinder walls, valves, etc.

It was still running good in 1995 until I ran it off a cliff and totaled it. It probably would have still been running, but the impact cracked the engine block in a few places.

I have no idea the history of that engine. I don't know how many miles it had on it. The fact that it ran at all amazed me.

The 318 was a dog w/ the 2bbl carb - had a Plymouth w/ one - 265k miles.

In my 94 Grand Cherokee the 318 (5.2 as it's now called) with injection is very, very peppy. It only has 160k on it, so it's got another 10 years to go.

Back in my early days at the dairy, we had a couple of 72 Dodges in the home delivery fleet. I made some unkind remarks about the two 'odd balls' one day and my boss reached into a file drawer and pulled out several files. They were maintenance files and the two 318 Dodges had the thinnest files by far. It was later I found out one of the drivers never pulled the dipstick: he just waited until the oil pressure guage dropped off a little then dumped in a couple of quarts.

The other one was driven by an older guy who lugged the motor something awful. When he went on vacation, it would take me the better part of a week to get the carbon burned out.

One of my brothers in law bought an ancient Ford van with a 302 to pull a UHaul down from Toronto. When he got into the yard, my father in law checked the dipstick. Not a drop on it until they had added 2 1/2 liters! It wasn't even knocking!

When I traded my 88 Chev p/u, it had over 200K miles and was going strong.
As for big block Chevs, in my experience, most of them, including the 454 in another brother in law's Chevelle wagon, couldn't handle short cycle operation. Within a 100k miles they would burn oil like a supertanker's livelihood depended upon it. The only one I saw which didn't turn into a smoking collection of parts was the mail truck which ran by home. It would be started up at 7 AM, run like a bat out of heck all day and be parked around 6 that evening. The guy loved it.

The comment about these motors being understressed is spot on.
Les