I have been wondering this for some time... I have seen 3300 FWD V6 engines in late 80's/early 90's Oldsmobiles and Buicks. I believe that these are 60* engines. They sure look like it anyway, and they have the same bellhousing pattern. Anyway, I know that the heads, pistons, intakes and blocks are different, but what about the cranks? I was wondering how they came up with a 3300 (3.3 liter) engine, and is the crank usable as maybe a cheap 'stroker' crank for the 3.1 liter or maybe the 2.8 liter. I also wondered about the cam in the thing, since these were usually the top HP motors in these models, and the 2.8/3.1 engines were the base level/economy motors in ours. I would think that the cam in these things would be a little bit hotter than the ones that were stock in the 3.1 liter. Maybe someone has a website that will clue me in, or has experience working on them and can tell me if there is any interchangability.

Just trying to learn something here.

Not sure; good question. I know the 3.8 TTA used heads from a 3.3, so the 3.3 might be 3.8 based. Someone with a GM/Helms service manual could look it up, I'm pretty sure that in the beginning of the "motor" chapter, they show the degrees between cylinder banks.

The 3.3 is another one of those 90 degree engines. The bolt pattern looks similar because the 60 degree v6 bolt pattern is a slightly modified version of the old Buick-Olds-Pontiac (BOP) bolt pattern. The 90 degree v6's still retain the old BOP pattern.

Good info, guys. Well, at least I know that all the stuff won't work at all. I wonder why they bothered to put together a 3.3 liter 90* Buick based block, when they had a 3.1 liter 60* Chevrolet based block already? Not that one is better than the other, just wonder why they made two engines at the same time with almost the same displacement that were so different from each other. Oh well.

I think it ges back to even earlier than that. Buick had a 3.0 v6 when chevy had the 2.8... then they got bumped up to 3.1 and 3.3