Originally Posted by
CNorell145
Alright ladies and gentleman, as you may have read in my other thread, my engine rebuild on the 3800 Series II did not work, engine blew again. Cracked a piston pretty badly. Took the engine apart, and one of the rod bolts was loose. Probably because we reused the stock bolts.
Anyways, I found a used N/A engine from a regal that has 64k miles on it. I am planning on top swapping my old parts after having the heads resurfaced. However I have a couple question about this process...
1) What exactly needs to be swapped over? From what I understand, I need the lower intake manifold gasket (metal preferred), my intake manifold, my heads with new gaskets, then throw on the supercharger and intercooler, and swap out the harmonic balancer to the S/C version. Am I missing anything? Also, what other preventative maintenance should I perform before I toss this motor in the car?
The standoff for the idler pulley, the coil bracket, fuel rail etc. Basically you want to strip the new block down to a short block, take off the front/rear covers and oil pan to reseal them. Then put the thing together as if it was a supercharged engine.
2) My cam is slightly scarred from the engine being blown, most of it is fine, although one lobe is mildly pitted. Can I just take this to a machine shop and have it reground?
It'll be smaller, possibly ruining the performance benefits. See what the machine shop says first though.
3) Spark plugs. I have heard that I should use the automate iridiums, and I have heard to use the coppers. My mod list is as follows:
Headers & Exhaust
Full size intercooler (water to air)
3.1" Pulley
XP-Hot cam
Now higher compression due to the N/A engine
42# injectors
High flow fuel pump
Not stock springs (not sure of the poundage, and way to check?)
Lifters
Will be re-tuning it as soon as the engine is dropped in.
Which plugs should I use? I am leaning towards the coppers, as it seems they are better for modded engines.
TR6 would be my suggestion. You can try colder plugs, but I found the intercooler helped quite a bit with keeping the plugs burning the same after dropping 0.4" in pulley size. Downside to colder plugs is misfires at idle, less fuel economy and shorter plug life. As for gap, you can start smaller and try to open it up, or leave it rather open and go the other direction. I found 50 thou to work quite well.
That pulley might be too small. Think 3.3-3.2 for those mods. Though, the only way to tell for sure is scan and see how it does. There isn't anything special to tune for with an L36 block either. Just run 14-16* of timing at WOT, keep fueling in check and adjust pulley size while scanning for knock. The smaller you go without KR, the faster you go.
4) Any other things I should do since I am swapping to the higher compression engine? A couple people said go back up in pulley sizes, although I would like to stay as close to where I am as possible, for maximum power. That being said, I also want something that is reliable...
Don't let it knock. Don't settle for more than 1* here and there. Arguably, you'd want to find that 1* here and there, then go up one pulley size.
Thank you in advance!
