Just purchased a 2002 Bonneville SLE last Sunday, and I love it so far. This website has been my haven all week. It has 121,000 miles on it and pretty clean inside and out. I bought it from the 2nd owners that only had it since November of last year. They paid $5k for it but they didn't like it because it rode awful and their "mechanic" claimed it needed a transmission as well as a plethora of other parts. They didn't want to dump any money into the car, and were obviously not wrenchers. Needless to say, I got a good deal on the car
So far I replaced the front transmission mount (whoa, it looked like the engine was trying to jump out of the engine bay). The original mount was torn apart underneath, it was in two pieces. Unfortunately I didn't know anything about the hockey pucks at that point so we'll see how long this anchor mount lasts. This repair literally changed the ride and shifting from awful to perfect. It now rides flawless.
Found a bad wheel bearing, the brakes on all 4 corners were trashed. Somebody pad slapped them so the rotors were toast. I replaced those with some wagners and decent rotors, as well as had new tires installed with alignment already.
The people I bought it from gave me a folder with all the service records from the 1st owner and it has had the LIM gasket job as well as UIM replacement, unfortunately by GM dealer, so I don't think it has updated gaskets. (is there a way to tell?)
So almost all the driveability issues have been cured for the most part.
When I bought the car p0420 as well as p0300 codes were stored. I ran a bottle of techron through it, and cleared the codes and so far no misfires or catalyst codes. I'll start dealing with those if/when they come back.
I posted about potentially purchasing a bonneville almost 5 years ago, but instead settled on a 3400 '05 Impala which had served me well. It was involved in an accident and has 190k now so it was time to retire it. So glad I found this Bonneville. Here's a crappy pic (sorry) of it after a good wash that she so badly needed.
