i have a 94 camaro with a 3.4 v6. i burned out something in the motor and now i cant hold oil pressure and it smokes very bad. i have wanted a v8 in it cuz i like the power. however i have been told that it is a real pain to swap. i have found a carburated 350 with a turbo 400 trans, with under 100,000 miles. runs great for $400 and i dont wanna pass up this deal!. what makes the swap so difficult that it is not worth doing. i DONOT wanna scrap the car but i have a low budget to get new parts or for a rebuild. any advice?

 

Chevy used to build cars so they could accept any Chevy motor. The engines themselves where not model specific. During an engine swap all the parts where available from many different models. This is not true for you 4th Gen Camaros. Just about every part is model and engine specific, even the frame member itself different V6 to V8. Even the 3.4 V6 is different from the 3.8 V6. So if you really want to put a V8 in your car the easiest way to do it is to find a V8 donor car the same years as yours and swap everything from the radiator to the rear.

Second issue is the 4th gen Camaro was never designed to have a Carburator or a distributor in it. It will bolt to the V8 frame but it will not fit without a cowl hood and some modification to the “Fire Wall”. Once you get it to fit you can forget about working on it. You would have to pull the motor just to get the cap off. Once you get that figured out you will have to deal with the power steering pump and so on and so on…….. Unless you can fabricate steel brackets and have a machine shop this will cost big bucks.

Either part your car out or think about a 3.4 build. There is info out there for 3.4’s using heads off of a new FWD putting out 200+ HP.

 

the problem that i am having is i am really short on money and cant afford a full doner car that is good enough to use all the parts. so really i would be better off sellin my camaro and buying a new one. but as all camaro drivers kno u get attached to your car. i am really bummed out bout all this cuz im drivin a P.O.S. car for now and idk how much longer its gonna last and i Need to get my camaro fixed! but i also want some extra power!

 

either do a 3.4 build or find a diffrent v8 as far as the swap goes if you can find a 4th gen v8 its a pain but manageable however like he said you will be changing out crossmembers the ecu your wiring harness motor mounts basically everything you see under the hood will have to be swapped not to mention then you might wanna get a diffrent trans depending on what you have in tere now which is more work including new mounts n so on having a v8 camaro is nice but what i realized right away with mine is that swapping v6 to v8 in anyhting newer than a second gen is just not worth it