>A respectable 260hp (in 04+ models) >So reliable its a meme >Comes pre-boosted so its easy to add more (swap pulley.exe) >Cars that featured the S/C also had nice amenities such as leather, HUD, sunroof, nice stereo, etc >Said cars are so plentiful they are dirt cheap now, easy to find a well maintained one >Replacement parts are also incredibly easy to come across too as a result >HUGE aftermarket, able to find practically any sort of upgrade with many different brands to pick from at hilariously cheap prices >Big community that knows more about the engine than GM does at this point. Which leads to alot of well designed tunes available that run better than stock >Trans issues can be alleviated with a shift kit, tune, trans cooler >Sleeper status >Decent mpg >Can be made to sound decent with a cam/and or different mufflers
Is there any v6 on the level of the 3800 Veeky Forums? Is it THE best v6 you can get for the money?
and as subjective as it is its one of the worst sounding engines ever
Isaiah Gomez
I think my isuzu made that much HP in 1998....
Zachary Hughes
My friend had a pontiac with one of those, the engine was gud but everything else was failing around it at one point or another. bretty comfy though
Jonathan Foster
..min spite of liking me some supercharged Riveras, lemme weigh in:
Alfa Romeo GTV6 V6 Cavalier: Much lighter, comes in stick, parts are even cheaper, isn't a Fiero Nissan Altima with a 3.5l or 3 7l. UH HUH, YOU WEREN'T EXPECTING THAT, WERE YA, PUNK?! One of my greatest regrets was discovering that Altimas are good Mazda 929. The engine isn't that special, but the car absolutely is.
Liam Brown
>Nissan Altima with a 3.5l or 3 7l. so long as it's pre-2007 and doesn't have the CVT Honestly, the Maxima is better.
Josiah Powell
>Altimas >good They are the most boringly sterile car out there, and that's what's usually said of the Camry, and kys for hating the Fiero
Cooper Williams
Is it better by being more expensive and looking try hard?
Logan Sullivan
no. by being better designed, better handling, and better to drive.
James Clark
>tfw no qt 1.8L V6
Evan Ross
>not swapping it out for a 2.5L V6
Juan Perez
lfx
integrated exhaust manifold should mean smog legal swaps for many cars in the future
Bentley King
What Isuzu? Because it definitely wasn't the Rodeo or the Trooper
Jackson Davis
I love how people think the IEMs negate the possibility of turbos when GM fucking made a twin turbo version
Charles Long
>the best v6 not very high standards
Colton Morris
But this is an engine thread, and if you disagree the vq engine is good then you are literally fucking retarded
John Green
>VQ >good That's a correct approximation, it's not great and it's not bad either, but it's old and outclassed by GM of all fucking companies
Joseph Anderson
Why does it need 6 cylinders and that size to make as much power as the B235R?
what the fuck is a b235r? some kind of eurocuck motor?
Colton Myers
Saab motor, 2.3T
Noah Lewis
Eurocuck motor it is then.
Tyler Morgan
All I see is a crying insecure lardass that can't make better engines even if they are almost twice the size and needs 2 extra cylinders to do it.
Jace Fisher
>All I see is a whining irrelevant sweeaboo that can't make better engines even if they rev to the moon and needs 2 bar of forced induction to do it.
Brayden Brooks
>rev it to the moon. Same peak power at LOWER RPM than the shit V6 HIGHER peak torque at LOWER RPM than the shit V6 >and needs 2 bar of forced induction to do it Just like the supercharger on that 3800 then. The B235R runs at 0.42 to 0.48 bar.
Educate yourself, burgerbrain.
David Williams
>limited aftermarket compared to the LS and newer v6's >Supercharger and pulley design shreds belts >??? Yeah nah i guess some people build them for big single turbos but honestly i'd rather a LS every time
Sebastian Clark
Too bad the GM trans are garbage and require all that tuning and aftermarket to no blow up
Easton Jones
Original Taurus SHO 3.0 V6 made by Yamaha. NA, 220 hp, 200 lb/ft, 7700 rpm redline, 5 speed manual only for most of it's run. All from Ford in 1989. Oh and it sounds fucking incredible, lopey cammed idle and full on scream above 3500 when the 2nd stage of the intake opens up. It's the GOAT V6, y'all GM fools are playing yourselves
Caleb Ortiz
Thank fuck for the T56 Borg Warner and Getrag 10/10
Ryder Hall
>Trans issues can be alleviated with a shift kit, tune, trans cooler This is wrong. You put more than 300hp through the trans you will break it sooner or later.
Ethan Butler
Saab b235R is 1.07 bar.
Until GM fully absorbed Saabs small engine greatness anything GM made that wasn't a V-8 was kind of shit. Maybe reliable if big displacement and low power, but otherwise kind of shit.
Adrian Murphy
If it's a GM or FCA turd yes
Adam Bailey
>260hp >280lb-ft
Why not Barra turbo? >322hp >332lb-ft >came out before this pile of GM shit.
Eli Nguyen
>Why not Barra turbo? Great engine, but long and heavy-ish
Andrew Williams
VR38DETT Same displacement, also forced induction.
The LP9 makes the same power with one liter of displacement less, gets better mileage, is more reliable, and has a hell of a better exhaust note than that iron lump of shit
Jaxon Cox
Packaging it into anything else but a long hooded car is shit tho.
Nobody outside of ausfags even know about it.
Josiah Green
>tfw b205r Pls no sludge
Aaron Price
>supercharged v6 from this millennium >less than 300hp Sad!
Daniel Davis
What's he engine then? I've never owned a V6 nor will I ever unless it's turbo
Grayson Cooper
>What's he engine What did the mean by this?
Seriously though, I am referring to the OP engine, the GM 3800 family of v6s. They're still god in the sense that you can get them cheap and they can take boost though lol
Ayden Campbell
>ywn L67 swap a w-body Cutlass Supreme or Lumina Carlo anyone else here obsessed with 90's GM
Asher Morris
>tfw you built this with your own hands and people like it
Jordan Morales
>Why not Barra turbo? Good luck finding one in the US Also useless for transverse applications Prepare to be replacing transmissions if you go above stock power.
Isaac James
The problem with the 3800 is that its reputation is writing checks its design can't cash. It's literally a cut-down Buick V8. They changed the firing order in the 1970's in an attempt to smooth out the normally rough running engine. Its literally 1960's technology. The thing about the 3800 is that anything it did that caught attention was done with forced induction. and it isn't particularly good with F/I. The design just isn't conducive to making power and is full of engineering band-aids designed to smoothen out its rough running nature. The 60* V6s, which were often positioned UNDER the 3800 in GM cars, are actually a much better design to make power with. They were designed as a V6 to start with. And unlike with the 3800, there are other V6 engines with the same firing order (notably Nissan's VQ series V6, and even the VR V6's used in the Nissan GTR). Despite using pushrods, it is probably the best pushrod V6 there is if you want to make power reliably. And there's even a DOHC variant if you're going to be anal about it.
Adam Russell
>And there's even a DOHC variant if you're going to be anal about it. and there's still holes in the block for the camshaft and pushrods that aren't used.
Easton Rivera
Is that bad or does that mean its more customizable?
Hudson Rodriguez
The DOHC variant's block was changed slightly to allow the use of the DOHC heads. It's been theorized you could convert it back to pushrods but no one's done it. Aftermarket support for the DOHC version is virtually non-existent. The community that has made the most out of the DOHC variant, oddly, is the Pontiac Fiero community. youtube.com/watch?v=-6jv_s1hUJg
Well damn. wish someone told me that the 3400 was better than the 3800 sooner. all this time i thought the 3800 was better because it was the highest engine option.
The 3800 had its own Open wheel racing series in Australia and it was used in Indy Lites in America and i'm wondering why they didn't use the 3400 instead. youtube.com/watch?v=0l5ZIR61O9o
A 3400 engine like the DOHC variant probably should've been used in the Grand National.
Ryan Cruz
Don't change oil every year? $50+20 minutes There, the sludge build up problem is fixed. Treat your engine better and don't put shit oil, use synthetic 5W-30
Nathan Lewis
It will always sound like shit I can't easily fit one in my Firebird because LOLFWD 260HP isn't impressive at all
It's shit
Nicholas Gomez
>260hp >from a boosted 3.6l engine
Merica
Connor Rodriguez
The 3800 in the GN isn't the same as the 90s SC one
Juan Robinson
3.8 ;^)
Jeremiah Perry
>i'm wondering why they didn't use the 3400 instead. probably because the 3400 was only used in transverse FWD applications.
>A 3400 engine like the DOHC variant probably should've been used in the Grand National. see, this gets tricky. The 60* engines weren't all that powerful during the 1980's. it wasn't until the gen 2 and gen 3 engines that they really became capable. Gen 1 engines used iron blocks and iron heads that didn't flow all that well. One of the highest performance options of gen 1 60* engines was the 140 HP 2.8L used in the Pontiac Fiero. At the time, it was decent power. Gen 2 engines added better flowing aluminum heads. This was when we started seeing performance versions of the 60*. An example would be the LG5, a turbocharged 3.1L V6 used only in the 1989-1990 Pontiac Grand Prix Turbo. Output was 205 HP with the turbo. The 3.1 Turbo was directly replaced in 1991 with the DOHC 3.4L which made 210 HP with no turbo, so it was very impressive for the time. So the GNX wouldn't have gotten the DOHC version because it didn't exist at the time. The development of the 60* had JUST started while the 3800 had already been in development for decades by that point. The 3.8 was good in the 1980's but not much beyond it. The gen 3 engines started the 3100/3400 naming convention and added splayed valves for better combustion.
To give an idea of how advanced the 60* engines eventually became, in 2006, you could buy a supercharged Pontiac Grand Prix in the engine in OPs post making 260 HP. Meanwhile, you could get a Chevy Impala with a N/A 3.9L 3900 V6 making 240 HP with no forced induction. BTW, the 3800 at that same time made just 200 HP without the supercharger.
The 3400 is better design-wise than the 3800. The reason it was often placed below the 3800 is because it made less power due to having smaller displacement. Bump them up to the same displacement however and the difference is pronounced.
Mason Butler
The 80's/90s 3800s are pretty good reliability wise, but boosting them pretty much negates any reliability advantage and Dexcool in the late 90s-2000s guaranteed LIM and head gasket problems. They are easily outclassed today by most anything. They are now memed up and the cars they're in are falling to bits. 10 years ago you could have made an argument for the 3800 being best for the money. For the money today, I'd take a Duratec Taurus over a 3800 W/H/G body
William Adams
3400 a shit LX9/LZ4 is love
Ryder Hughes
Pic related is the best v6 you can get. I don't give a flying fuck about how my engine sounds like the other idiots in this board, but pic related can make over 400hp NA, either with a big bore, or a 12:1cr kit + other parts. Can rev past 8k RPM's with a valve upgrade, can make 700+ HP with a turbo kit, 600+ with a SC kit, and is easily obtainable. Its one of the greatest engines of all time in my opinion.
Josiah Morales
>series 2 3800 S/C >sitting for three months in container >decide to start it, fill the tires, roll it around a bit, then put it back >expect the battery to be dead as fuck and need a jump >battery has enough to turn the engine over maybe a couple times >it starts on the first crank
Gotta love that 3800 reliability.
William Garcia
NA 3800's aren't reliable so why would the SC model be any different?
Leo Reed
The 3.8 in the GN is not the same as the 3800. the 3.8 in the GN is a Fireball V6, the earlier Buick V6's, where as the 3800 is the later generation of the Buick V6's. They're both 90-degree V6's, but outside of that, there are a lot of differences.
Lucas Lopez
Rotella t-6 is the official oil of saab nuts.
The oil in the b205r get some abuse, first going through the turbo, then the oil pan is less than an inch from the exhaust .
Nicholas Green
All 3.8's are gutless wonders that sound like shit. I'd take a 3.1/3.4 over one anyday.