well i believe ihave blown the engine in my 97 z24 . for no apperant reasonit started knocking,on my way from jackson. none of the gages showed any thing .idrove it about 40 milesthis way later on in the day iwas goingto take it somewhere to give it a look over.it went about 2 miles then died after making 2 or3 loud knocks. it will still crank but it runs real rough, knocks bad and smokes bad. i,m going to tear in to it tomorrow give it a look see. i guess i,m in the market for a new engine.if anyone knows where i could find one cheap please let me know .a new one runs $3200.00. a used one goes for about $1200.00 to $1800.00 i live about 30 miles west of meridian ms.so one within about 100 miles of me would great. some one please let me know if they hear something thanks

nice to see another mississippi, sucks your still far away. but there are much cheaper motors out their if you look.
if you really want new try GMpartsdirect.com with this part number (12462258) also try carparts.com but the 2.4's are fairly common in other cars and can be found readily in the boneyards. best of luck

Sounds like you probably threw a main bearing. Sometimes you can get away with repairing it if you shut the engine off immediately when it happens, and don't run it again, but if you drove it like that, you were just asking for a disaster. Probably mashed up your rings, which is why it got louder and smokes now.

Sorry to hear it died, but you can definitely get a cheaper engine than that. Look for 96+ Grand Ams and Cavs.

Here's a good example of what you can get a 2.4 for if you look around: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/97-98-Grand-Am-Cavalier-Sunfire-QUAD-4-2-4-Engine-3024B_W0QQitemZ320183787436QQihZ011QQcategoryZ33615QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem

There are more out there, but that's a good example, and a decent seller (I've purchased many parts from him before).

www.car-part.com