'99 Dodge Stratus burnt up !

[cfz2882]

not my car,my neibors car:said he was pulling a hill and car started losing power and a knocking noise came from under the hood-he pulled over and looked under the hood,and finding nothing wrong closed the hood and drove on-a few mile later car again began to knock and lose power,then quit-opening the hood found a small fire had started that quickly got bigger and consumed the car.He said these cars had been recalled for fires starting from steering fluid leaking on the exhaust and his car had the recall fix done in '06.Initial fire was indeed in area of steering hoses...Kind of puzzeling why the car was knocking and loosing power-almost sounds like he ran it out of oil and blew the engine...(are these the chryslers that have water pump mounted in the oil pan-creating a nice engine blowing booby trap when pump seal goes...BTW,seems some late-model GMs with the 3.8 are known for leaky rocker cover gaskets to dribble oil on the exhaust and if the oil ignites,sets alight some plastic underhood cladding and burns up the car.

 

[countryford]

Doesn't sound like the brightest person. Car makes a knocking sound and loosing power. Stops, checks under hood, sees nothing wrong and goes on again. He was smart enough to pull over, but should have called for a tow at that point. Usually when a vehicle engine starts knocking and loosing power, that means it threw a rod. Several reasons why that happened, but could be from not enough oil. Hard to say for sure.

 

[rp2813]

Ditto what Justin said.  It could also have been caused by lack of coolant.  Our '64 Lincoln was doing something similar when we pulled off the freeway a few blocks from home.  We made it home, and found a freeze plug had blown/rusted out.   We had all of them replaced with brass ones.

 

[johnb300m]

As far as I know (from my own 2002 Stratus) only the 2.7L V6 Chrysler engine had the timing chain driven water pump with open flow to the oil pan.
There might've been a 4cyl version like that too, but I'm not sure.
I know the 3.2/3.5 engines and their variants had timing belt driven water pumps, but they were not open to the oil system.