Hey gang, I have a little bit going on with my 96 and my overall question is do you think in your opinion it would be more cost efficent for me to replace or rebuild my current engine.. Follow me on this journey and I would love your feedback...

Back in 2002 I crossed two plug wires, burned off a tip on the #5 plug and got the valve stuck... since then I've driven it about 15,000 miiles... The engine has 192,000 miles on it, mostly highway.. She has head gasket and exhaust manifold leaks as well as a bad high pressure power steering hose but other than that, she's in good shape.. For the last four years, she has been rarely driven, much less started... She is garage kept... so recently the wife and I decided to get her going again and thus the question... rebuild or replace the 3800 Series II.... I would like to stick with the 3800 II engine, so that we are not changing the rear end or the computer, I have done a good bit of performance mods, mostly suspension, but she has also has a K&N FIPK intake as well as an adjustable Borla cat-back quad tip... I also have added a B&M shift module and a few other performance and apperance mods... The gears, (not bearings) whine, so they will need to be changed as well.. and the power window motors as well as the rag top will need to be replaced due to the bubble effect when the AC is on or driving with the top UP....

anyway, I would greatly appreciate comments, suggestions or whatever in responce to what I have going on with her... the replace/rebuild or any of the other issues I'm working with...

Thanks in advance!

Darrin

 

Replace it with a series 3 motor. There's a sticky in this section of what you need to keep off you motor and put on a fwd series 2 or 3 motor. The only beniffet of rebuilding is you can build it more performance wise.

 

a series 3 fwd motor? really? and whats the cost range for both routes relatively

 

used motor is around $500-$1000. a rubuild would be around $1500+ depending on what you put in it and cleaning and any port & polish jobs done to it. to put a fwd drive engine in theres a few parts you swap over from your camaro engine to make it work. things like intake manifold, oil filter stem out and dip stick, and a few other things. Heres the link to what cars to get the motor from and what parts need to be swapped. https://camaroforums.com/forum/v6-te...nt-info-57568/

 

@3800camaro how much of that 1500+ is in parts?

 

Thanks for the input guys. I am not interested in making it a FWD at all... I'm keeping her RWD for certain. Just trying to decide if it is more cost effective to rebuild the current engine or to replace it with a low milage 3800 Series II from 95-97...

If I do the rebuild, the gaskets would need to be changed anyway, so that would solve the leaking, probably would have them port a little (not much room between cylinders to port very much) polish and upgrade the injectors to compesate for the higher air flow of the intake/exhaust... (no computer mod available)

Also has anyone heard of the term "dieseling" ? I remember having high oil pressure to the point it sounded like clapping or clanking... tow truck driver said it was "dieseling".. where the oil temp was too high.. ???

 

They're not saying to make it FWD, just putting a Series III FROM a FWD in your Camaro. They have a little more power and it's going to be easier to find one with lower miles since they're coming off newer cars. There will just be a few things you will have to transfer from your old motor to make the Series III RWD ready.

 

]FacePalm[ ok, that does change things then!!! LOL... totally got sidetracked on thinking the suggestion was to make it fwd... (kept rubbing my chin thinking to myself, who would want to do that?) going re-read that sticky now. thanks for the clarity!

 

Could be anywhere from $800+ just in parts. It all depends on what parts you put in. Then you have machining and boiling the block clean.

 

No way can you do a complete rebuild 200K motor back to factory specs for $1500 unless you own a machine shop. Machine shop work alone would be pushing 2K. New valve guides, regrind the seats and valves alone going to cost $600-$800. Add in Turning the crank, boring the cylinders, resizing the rods your close to $1700 right there. That assumes things like the line bore and lifter bores are still good.

High miles motors are a pain to get back right and sticking a set of 200K heads on a motor that is half way rebuilt is not going to run like new. It will be way cheaper to find a low miles engine and rebuild that then messing with a high miles motor unless you plan on building the motor with a lot more HP. In that case you should redo almost everything anyway so it does not matter if use your high miles motor or a low miles one.

Will you be doing the work?.