I came up on a deal for a 3.8 turbo,tranny and rearend for 1.100$US. The guy says that he needs a crankshaft.

I have a 3.8 sitting in my garage but it's a frontwheel drive engine. you guys think I could take the crank from it and also the heads to do a 3rd gen swap ?

 

I assume you are talking about a turbo buick 3.8 turbo? If so, you will need another turbo crank. Sometimes they pop up for sale in the parts for sale section of turbobuick.com. I am by no means an expert in this matter but from what I can tell the turbo cranks from buick 3.8 turbo motors (and 4.1 cranks from the NA motors of the early 80s) are the only ones that can take the abuse. If you are looking for some more specifics on this go to the website I mentioned above and you will see a lot of threads on this subject. Good luck.

 

You should be able to use the heads. What year is the fwd 3.8

 

it's brand new and from an 88 regal . The 3.8 turbo is an 83 I believe .

 

The FWD head are what is on my TTA as compard to the RWD heads on my GN. However, I believe the engineers changed the pistons to account for the different heads and if you start mixing turbo regal (RWD) intended motors with FWD heads and not accounting for this in the rest of the bottom end of the motor you may have some problems on your hands. You would probably be better going with a later version of the turbo 3.8 too as the 83 motors are carbed and not too impressive to drive. You would be much happier with a 3.8 SFI Turbo setup, intercooled of course. Good luck with the rebuild and swap if you go for it just research all of the possible alternatives and issues you will face before you start pulling stuff out of your car!

 

Hmmm...something strange, the guys told me it's a computer controlled and that it had indeed an intercooler .

 

Spoke with the guy, it's an 87 fuel injected 3.8 with intercooler.

Why wouldn't I be able to use the crank from my 3.8 fwd.


Thanks

 

you don't even need the FWD heads UNLESS you are using air conditioning. they had a header / ac clearence issue, so if you use the RWD head and no AC, you are fine