While the Northstar engine was actually designed to be difficult to overheat, design flaws actually made it easy to overheat. As we'll discuss further on, these engines burn a lot of oil which creates a lot of carbon buildup. This carbon buildup then causes increased engine temps which can blow the gasket too.
What year Northstar engines to avoid?
Which Cadillac Northstar models suffer most with head gasket leaks? Cadillac DTS, Buic Lucerne and Cadillac STS were the last cars to use a Northstar engine, but generally it is felt that those models from 2002 onwards do not suffer as much with the head gasket issues that plague earlier models.
How many miles is a Northstar engine good for?
It depends how well they're maintained. But in general they're very reliable engines. In many cases they outlive the car. Mine is up to over 270,000 miles and still going.
Is the Northstar V8 reliable?
In 2004, they finally replaced the notorious bolts. They were swapped with LS6 head bolts which were longer than the original bolts and featured a coarser thread. Due to this modification, the 2005-2011 Northstar engines had fewer gasket issues. In fact, it was no less reliable than other aluminum V8 engines.
What is special about the Northstar engine?
Northstar is an interference engine: the valves will strike the pistons if they lose timing. GM used cast aluminum cylinder heads featuring 4 valves per cylinder. The heads used dual overhead cams driven through the "maintenance-free" cam-drive chain case.
Do all Northstar engines leak oil?
When Does the Oil Start Leaking? We wish we could tell you that your Northstar engine will never leak, but our experience tells us otherwise. There's no way to avoid this. It's understood that every Cadillac Northstar 4.6 engine will start leaking oil at some point, regardless of the Cadillac model that you drive.Dec 1, 2020
Is the 4.6 L Northstar a good engine?
Registered. When we had the Northstar Sevilles/DeVilles come in for service, we found the occasional oil leak from the pan, and water pumps are a frequent purchase for some. Overall, performance from these engines, as long as all routine maintenance is followed, is pretty decent reliability-wise.
Are Northstar engines any good?
The Northstar engine is a family of GM engines produced from 1993 until 2011. As such, it won the Ward's 10 Best Engines three years in a row from 1995-1997. However, despite its successes the engine suffers from a number of common engine problems that are detrimental to the Northstar engine's reliability.
What year did GM fix the Northstar engine?
After a long run spanning almost two decades, the Northstar engine came to its final leg in 2011. The last cars to sport a Northstar engine were the Buick Lucerne, Cadillac DTS, and the Cadillac STS. The Northstar was later replaced by the GM LS small-block OHV engine, switching back to the pushrod design.