Sometime soon im going to be putting a 3.4 in my bird, and im the type of person who likes to meticulously plan out things before i can even come close to having the resources to actually do them, so naturally ive been thinking quite a bit about it lately. What im wondering, is what any of you have done (beyond bolt-ons) in building up a 3.4.

here's what i've thinking about(loosely):
bigger cam(havent looked into specifics yet)
higher cr pistons(stock is 8.9, right? i figure i can bump it up to 10ish and run on the ****ty 91 premium here in cali, but i havent done any math yet.
1.6 roller rockers
pacesetter headers
and i was planning on bumping up the psi a bit with an adjustable fpr, better vaporization = higher ve, right?(to a point of course)

i know stroking is pretty much out of the question on a 3.4 block, too much of a pain/too expensive, and id really like to pass cali emissions, so i'm not going to do any turboing probably, although i sure would like to. should i look into better heads/intake/tb, or am i just going to run into smog problems there?

anything im missing, anything im being a dumbass about, or whatever?

and how much do you think i can get at the flywheel about? a stock 3.4 is 160hp, right? would 190 or so be entirely out of the question?

fire away.

 

There is a buzz through the local hotrod industry here in Orange county that there's for some reason a rumor floating that max Octane pumpgas may go down to 90 real soon.

Has me worried about what I have planned. It sounds like I may just stick to stock CR forged pistons and stock rods because of this. F*cking politicians, especially here in California. If they can't take away the fun through smogchecks, they raise the high octane gasoline out of our daily price range. It is a backdoor way of getting rid of gasoline burning vehicles on the roads. Who's going to buy a new performance car if there is no gasoline availiable to run the motor.

 

the whole california deal really does suck, i have huge beefs with the politicians on their handling of guns also, im all for controlling guns and smog and pollution, but they could at least be smart about it. they are either entirely uneducated in these arenas, or they are in someone's back pocket. its ****ed up. The guys around here who do cars pretty much stick to pre 75 vehicles because its such a pain. problem is, i dont like the old old cars, i like 80's cars.

i might be going down south to irvine for college too, if i have to register my car down there then the even stricter smog limits will really screw me(i live in a rural area). if i cant get enough out of a v6 under their rules, im going to end up going rebel on their asses and dodging smog.

how big of a cam is too big for decent streetability? im considering building it for a redline of like 7k, and was looking at a lvl 3 crower cam(03065), but then i heard people at 60degreev6.com saying the crane 272 was kinda intense, and this one is even bigger than that.

the 272 is 2k-5k and the 03065 is 2.2k-6k for their power bands. i dont have camshaft experience, so how much of a difference is that going to be.

 

That lvl 3 crower cam isn't too bad really, it's one step above what i'm running. If I could go back, I would have gotten it instead. The Lvl 2 I'm running is very streetable, although you have to rev abit to make use of the power. If you are going with a port job on your heads, go ahead and use that cam (you may end up wanting to run a vac resivoir though). Seems like it would be fine though.

 

If I get stationed in Callifornia I'm just going to run the Z off methanol . At that point 500+ n/a HP on the ground becomes a reality.
It will still suck because some of my guns will be illigal there, dosen't matter I have safe houses for my guns in Maine and Va (free states).
Your right about them not know any thing about cars and guns, they realy don't.
The only reason they would ban higher octain fuel is to make cars fail the smog test just so the owner would have to get rid of it and be forced to buy some battery powered piece of shat.
Thus lineing the pocket of the auto makers that paid off the politicians.
Those dirty politicians can lick my ***, I could be burning tons of fossile based fuel (most methanol is made from natural gas) makeing tons of power and paying $0 on gas taxes, also alcohol powered cars don't make any emmisions they smog test for.
The crane 272 cam is kind of big. It will be more streetable then that bigger one.
I'm getting that 272 cam for my 3.4L it should be kind of rough but that's how I like it.
Every one that has 272 says that there very streetable with a standard transmission.
You will have to tune it good to pass smog.
I know it can be done, a guy I went to school with that lives near LA (his dad owned car shop) his mustag put out about 400hp with a trick flow preformance package and other stuff, he said that even with no cats his car could pass the smog sniffer test with flying colors.

 

the stock CR on a 3.4 is 9.5.

Just port the stock heads, since your in cali doing anything else to the heads will make you have to jump thru hoops.

Stock 3.4 is rated at 160hp/200tq. According to desktop dyno I have 195hp and like 235tq still on the stock cam. I dont belive it though.

 

can i put the lv3 crower cam in my 91 3.1 auto? what springs/ other valvetrain parts will i need to make it perform good. will it make my car sound really good at idle with this bigger cam?

 

so with the t5 im putting in, i should be able to use the lvl 3 ok on the street? ill just have to rev up to like 2k-ish to get any power, which is fine with me.

and any kind of head swap is pretty much out of the question dale? id be alright just porting, but i dont know if just porting will let the lvl 3 breathe over 6k.

is the tb restricted by smog? probably, but they can go out to like 58 mm, right?

with the lvl 3 i should be able to get away with 10.5 cr, ya think?
im trying to find out the piston dish and head chamber volumes so i can compute compression, but i havent had any luck yet . . .

hmm, im sure ive forgotten plenty of things already, but thats why im doing this now. thanks for all the advice so far guys.

 

The only other heads for our engine that can be found are the FWD aluminum heads, and you have to use the FWD intake also. The smog police see that and your stopped dead in your tracks. Plus you will have to use the FWD pistons also.

Your best bet is port the heads. Supersix motorsports sells them pre-ported. but will cost you some change. Also look at the flow chart on them, some of these cams are useless opening the valves more, when its not letting anymore are in. They also tell you what the chamber size is.

Only 1 person on here has a ported/larger TB. As of right now, nobody has beenable to port the stock TB and make it work. To thin.

I think on 91 pump gas, 10.5 is going to be to high. I didnt see alot of benifit up bumping up compression on the dyno simulator. Some yes, worth the extra cost and worry of detonation, not in my book.

 

ok, it must have been a fwd tb over on 60*v6

yeah, fwd intake definitely wouldnt fly here, so a port job it would be. i was looking for a good way to figure out if i could flow that high, ill look at flow charts tonight or tomorrow then.

 

so, ive tried a couple cfm calculators, and im getting that to make full power at 6k in a 207 cid engine i will need heads that flow about 180 cfm each(with a VE of 1, i havent looked into figuring that out more precisely yet, but i doubt its going to be much different) . . . stock is 117, and the porting ive heard about has only really increased it to 150 or so.

so am i wasting power by using a lvl 3 cam, or is a VE that high unrealistic on these engines, or what?

 

Supersix now has a stage 3 package for the 3.4's.

The stage3 heads have 1.84 stainless steel intake valves and 1.6 SS exhaust valves. Stock is 1.72/1.42. He is getting over 160CFMs with those valves stock intake was 129, and the ported with stock valves was 151.

These will be my next motor purchase.

 

The stock head flow that I have seen max out around .4'' lift at 117, 121 and those full throttle stock heads flow 129 cfm.
I think they could have goten those 129#'s if they put 3 angle valves in the stock heads.
All the flow charts I have seen have the heads maxing out at about .4'' lift, meaning that even if you push the lift to .55'' they will still be flowing the same cfm.
The V.E. numbers on a stock engine will be about .75, a worked engine will have a V.E. of .80, a realy worked engine will be about .90
100% V.E. @ peak power is very hard to get.
That means you engine is moving all 205ci of air every 720' of engine rotation.
If you think about it with out a power adder it would be imposible to get 100% V.E. but Nextel cup cars run up to 108% V.E. all day.
It has some thing to do with this (intake harmonics chart) and my big cam theory.
There is a big difference in 100% and 75% numbers.
My 3.4 with the ported and polished heads, intake and 272 cam will only net me about a 80% V.E.
Those are the conservitive #'s.
Change them a little higher to what I would like to have and I get 84%, but I don't think I'll be adding 50hp to this engine with my mods.
Add a bigger TB and 5 angle valves, up the power (conservitive #'s) then I get about 85%, but if I realy do add those mods then my peak power rpm will rise so then I'm back to about 81% again.

 

Big cam theory...
As for the position of the piston and valve.
On a big cam it start with over lap.
The intake valve opens as much as 15 and some times as much as 20 degrees (20 is more for 14,000rpm motor cycle engines) BTDC.
The exhaust valve closes lets say 8-10 degrees ATDC when the piston is moving down there is still exhaust getting blown out.
At low rpms this is bad. exhaust gets sucked into the intake runner at low rpms while there is vacuum in the intake. To take full advantage of this there must be positive pressure on the intake valve at high rpms when the intake valve starts opening at 15 degrees BTDC There is a slight vacuum in the combustion chamber. because the exhaust valve opened before BDC, letting the exploding gas blowing its self out. but I'm not going to get to far into that yet.
As the intake valve starts really opening with the piston at 5-8 degrees (I mean open enough to let some air move) BTDC. There is intake air being sucked in and getting forced into the chamber chasing out the exhaust while the piston is moving up in the cylinder.
As both valves are open there most (about 1/16'') at the same time and the piston is at TDC the exhaust is sucking all of its self out and the intake air is starting to force its self and it is taking over.
Once the exhaust valve closes all the way the intake air is trapped and the piston is moving down.
The intake valve is open its most well after 90 ATDC. Its open it's most around 30-50 degrees before BDC depending on if its a big turbo cam or big N/A cam.
And closes as late as 40 degrees ABDC (don't think I have seen any that close later than that), that is when most of the air is sucked into the cylinder (ABDC). Yes there is a lot of air still getting sucked into the chamber because the runner air was accelerated during the time when the piston was between around 90 ATDC and full valve open. So now that the piston has stopped and is now moving up in the bore air is getting forced into the chamber by means of some unseen force.
At this point the engine is super charging its self. The amount of self super chagrined is determined by a lot of factors, rpm, runners, intake harmonics, valve timing (mainly intake open ABDC), spark timing comes into play a lot when you do FI and more.
The self super charging really starts with the exhaust opening well before BDC on the power stroke and the exhaust blows its self out creating a slight vacuum sucking the piston up the bore and some times contaminating the chamber with oil if you don't have good oil control.
Then back to the top and start it all over again.
That would be for a big cam at high rpms.

 

ok, so VE is a direct result of flowing enough cfm into each cylinder to completely fill the cid at a given rpm. i got it now.

and with your "big cam theory", the valves create a sort of vacuum that fills the cylinder and some, making a super-atmospheric pressure within the cylinder and allowing for a VE of over 100%

man, a stage 3 from supersix is quite the pretty penny, if im going to spend 1k for ported heads, ill spend 3k on a turbo instead, even if i wont be able to pass smog with it.

about how much would a local machine shop probably charge me to port these heads out?

 

Machine shops that P&P arn't known to be the best unless they have some one that can do em realy good.
Most machine shops charge to much I think for just the porting. They normaly charge up to $400, less most of the time.
The best thing about cam and P&P is if you get it running right the smog *** holes won't know it's there.
Theres 2 ways to figure V.E. the calculators use hp and rpm to the cfm flow to figure V.E.
Or you can figure the V.E. to size a carb(just to know how much it could breath aka 100% V.E. and then multiply it by .80 or .75 to get real world V.E. on a street engine) . You don't want a carb that's over sized.
There $1k I did for less then $300. But I don't need bigger valves.
Best way to get 100% or better V.E. with out FI is nirtous.
The Z28 engine I'm putting together if I spary it with a 150 shot I predict 108% V.E. at peak (6500rpm) and 670 ft/lb of torque at 4200rpm if I dumped a 150 shot all at once. That will hurt the th700. That's why I designed the 3 stage nitrous system. Some say I don't need 3 stages, think about turning on 670ft/lb of torque at 4200rpm.