Well, my car finally gave out on me. It barely runs, and I've decided that it's time for either a new engine or to rebuild my 3.1

I am going to be driving this car to college, so I am not wanting something with outrageous gas milage. And I have limited resources and only this summer to do it.

So here are some of the alternatives that I have come up with.

1)Rebuild my 3.1 This would be the easiest removal and installation wise.

2)Rebuild my 3.1, but change it from Fuel injeted to carbourated. This is what my stepdad is wanting me to do.

3)Swap in a 3.4, this would be easy as well. Of course, if I decided to use the stock 3.4 electronics, then it wouuld get a little more complicated, but not much.

4)swap in a carbed V8. This would probably be the hardest out of the three since I would have to change the bellhousing on the tranny, and the tach, and mountings on the power steering, alternator, etc.....

I am looking for an engine that will be easy on the wallet now, but have room for improvement since i will be wanting to take this car to the track later on.

So what would you suggest? I'm kinda lost right now....

 

Since you want to keep easy on wallet now, I would say keep the base you have(no v8 swapping). Either find 3.4 or rebuild 3.1. Id say cost is possibly the same)

How much car mechanics knowledge do you have?

What are your tool resources? (lots, little, can borrow shop, etc)


If you want to drag it later, really, v6 is not the way to go. However, if you want to do something crazy with a v6. It will depend on what you want to do. Keeping it NA Id go with a 3.4, if you want to turbo it, keep it 3.1


:edit, I need to learn to read the full post first.

 

Then a carbed V8 is out of the question.

Just rebuild the 3.1 and drive it until you can get something better, or swap in a V8 or whatever you want to do with it once you have the money.

 

Ok, so rebuild the 3.1 seems to be a reoccuring theme so far.

I have minimal mechanical experience, a Hayne's manual, and half of a garage..... oh and some tools, but nothing extremely fancy. My stepdad has pretty good experience with auto mechanics as he used to work part time in a shop, but I can't rely on him too much, since he has school. But what I lack in knowledge, I partially make up with enthusiam.

So with rebuilding the 3.1, basically I am looking at taking all the non-essential stuff out such as the emissions clutter (thankfully Illinois doesn't care about emissions.) My engine currently has some minor problems with the ESC circuit, and obviously most of the parts are 15 years old, so I plan on replacing what I can. But my biggest question is do I stay fuel injected, or go with a carb? I have heard things about carbs not making asmuch power. I know that the 3.1 isn't a terribly weak motor, but witha car that big, every little bit helps. Also I was under the impression that fuel injection gets better gas mileage.

I want to figure as much of this out as I can before I have a half taken apart motor sitting in my garage. I want to get this done as quickly as possible, because I miss driving my car.

So any help would be greatly appreciated guys! Thanks!

 

stay fuel injected. if there were some big baddass carb setup for these motors i could understand switching, but otherwise its stupid to spend time and money to switch back to older less precise technology.