I,m buying a 1992 Cutlass Ciera, 3.3 litre, 3 speed automatic, with 30,000 original miles for $1800. An elderly lady had it in the garage untill recently. i drove it 70 mph ,etc. It drove great . The a/c works ok now ,but it needed to be charged last year. Also under the car on passenger side I see what I think is the common leak by the drive shaft to transmission . question = is it true the a/c system on almost any car will spring a leak after so many years? Is it usually easy to repair such leaks? If the gear shift dash indicator does not have "od" am I correct in assuming it is a 3 speed? thanks for any input. Jim.

What you have is a Olds with the 3300 V6( this is the little brother to the 3800 )... Very good little engine.. Its attached to a 3T40 Transmission which is a 3 speed with a Lock Up torque converter...

I would have preferred the 4T60 just to have Overdrive and get a tad better in the MPG department... But you can't beat a low mileage car like that..

Generally most, but not all cars will need AC service and refilling at some point in the car's lifetime. Usually you should get many years out of an AC system before it goes bad; but this varies somewhat with use.

I have had AC systems lose all coolant on a 6 year old car due to hose failure. However, I had one 35 year old car that still was running an all-original AC system.

Usually fixing a leak is relatively easy; the difficult/expensive part is finding the leak and then evacuating and filling the system afterward repairing it. This takes special equipment and is generally not something you can do at home.