Complete engine failure or seizure on the 1998 Buick Lesabre
Only 4 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When complete engine failure or seizure gets reported
There are 5 reports of complete engine failure or seizure on the 1998 Buick Lesabre, 4 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 105,000 miles. It is the 26th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 110,728 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Putting it right typically runs $4,500–$12,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.
The same failure, every year of the Buick Lesabre
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
I purchased a '98 buick lesabre - from my brother-in_law, it only had 70,000 miles on it when the head gasket blew causing me to rebuild the top section of the motor--then after that was fixed and I drove the car for approximately 3 months more -- the bottom part of the engine blew--and I had to replace the complete engine not knowing what caused this problem. The car was always maintained by the dealership "boyle buick" in bel air, md. *jb
Gentlemen: I have a 1998 buick lesabre with 31,258 miles on it. Last weekend, I turned the key and heard a loud bang. The starter motor case had cracked. My independent garage put in a new starter to the tune of $526.00. When they tried to start the car, the same thing happen to the new starter. The garage then discovered that the 3.8l v6 engine was frozen due to a leak in the intake manifold which allowed coolant to enter the cylinders. They said the leak was caused by the gm "5 year" coolant rotting the manifold away. They estimated the repair at $2,000.00, including the starter. I called buick customer service; they are vague about any problem or liability. They did ask that I take the car to a buick dealer for diagnosis. I took it to fields buick. The dealer confirmed the problem and the cause. They want $2,300.00 to fix it, excluding the starter. Gm refuses to do anything. I have discovered a gm technical service bulletin (01-06-01-007a) indicating that gm has known about this problem since at least july, 2001. The problem affects several makes and models. A catastrophic engine failure at 31,000 miles is absurd.
My intake manifold gasket was made of plastic and my engine locked up, I was informed from my mechanic that gm was aware of this problem and came out with a better one made of metal. This a costly mistake leading to 850 dollars of repair, that could have been prevented if gm would have stepped up with this in the first place and been fixed with the new gasket instead of causing more damage then needed. *tr
Also reported on the 1998 Buick Lesabre
Other engine problem
Other fuel system problem
Exhaust leak or fumes in the cabin
Other electrical problem
Radiator or coolant leak
No-start or intermittent start failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 5 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 5 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does complete engine failure or seizure happen on the 1998 Buick Lesabre?
Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 110,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is complete engine failure or seizure on the 1998 Buick Lesabre?
5 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed