Hello, my father recently acquired a 1995 Olds Cutlass Supreme SL with a 3.1 liter V6 for 500 dollars. It only has 124,000 miles on it but has a blown head gasket and a bad lower intake manifold gasket which I hear they are notorious for. So now I'm in the process of fixing it up for him, and now that I have the top end of the engine torn apart, are there any other parts that are due for replacing as long as I'm that deep into the engine? Thanks for any and all suggestions

Pull the oil pump drive out and replace the O-ring, I also added a paper gasket like from a small block distributer as insurance. The 3.1 always leaked oil from that spot.

Thanks, I will be sure to do that, I definitely don't want to be tearing into this engine again any time soon

check the heads and block for straitness before you get to far

Thanks for the suggestion, can I do that myself or do I have to take the heads into a shop?

My 96 Achieva has the same engine in it and I would recommend buying new lower intake bolts because I had to pull mine back apart because of intake leaks because I used the old lower intake bolts. Also I if you didn't know the Lower intake bolts are suppose to be torqued down to 10 foot pounds and the upper intake torques down to 18 foots pounds. Also make sure you put the push rods in the same order you pulled them out of because one is longer then the outer. I did that and man let me tell you what I had one yell of a time finding a diagram telling me what push rods go where. Also if the engine has the ball and pivot type rocker arms the nut that holds the ball and nut on use a little bit of lock tight on it and then torque them down to 18 foot pounds. By doing that the rocker arms won't work themselves loose.

Also since the 3.1 engine had a cast iron block and aluminum heads, the head will half to go to a shop to be redone. I got my Achieva for 100 dollars more and mine had the same problem with a blown head gasket but ounce I was able to get all of the work done man besides all of the other work that has been done it it I really due like the 3.1 engines. You sure can get a lot of power out of them and make them go really really fast with a few simple tweaks.

get a known strait metal piece and make an x pattern on the block and heads corner to corner, you should not see any air space any where. lay it flat around the perimeter as well basically should touch everywhere and not see any gap. if you do you should take it to a machine shop for more involved tests and possibly machining the surfaces

Thanks a lot for all the info guys, and DeathDealer, I agree that the 3.1 seems like quite a nice peppy little engine from what little I drove it. And even with it having a bad head gasket!

one of many 60deg wbodies ive had but the grand prix i had with a 3.1 went over 300k before the rest of the car fell apart. never had to get into the engine once. just regular valvoline once every 5k.