doubt it, but my room mate thinks so. okay, i got a 89 2.8 i'm going to completely rip apart and solvent bathe the block and everything. buying the 2.8 stroker kit, balancing the crank that comes with it, getting aluminum driveshaft. porting and polishing, cold air intake, headers, intercooler, twin turbos, and having some head work done, and finding some special roller tappets instead of the flat ones that come with it. whats anyone think about this? questions comments? what do you think the engine will push then what do you think the dyno will measure out?
(not building differential or transmision yet) money is hard to come by haha.
Btw i think the engine will push 380 hp, 340 rwhp.

 

listing a bunch of parts is one thing. assembling then into a coherent assembly that works together and makes power is something else.

i think the 340 rwhp is way too high even for that setup.

not sure what the current single turbo guys put out power wise, but im pretty sure not anywhere near that.

 

my friends Votech auto engine rebuilding instructor is good friends with us and gonna give me a hand. he retired this last year, builds sprint car motors for S****s n giggles, so thats not what i'm worried about

 

Large sums of money out of your wallet!

 

I think my 3.4 would do 180 HP with headers and the 204/216-112 cam. Put 15 psi of boost on that, that should do 360 HP at the crankshaft, if the stock crank will hold that much. I doubt it, and I'm not considering 15 psi anyway.

 

Dude, you never mentioned swapping cylinder heads... Single turbos add about 100HP over stock. Don't think you're going to see 500HP, though, without swapping heads. Even then, you won't see it for very long (does your instructor know these engines have a tendency to split right down the middle, through the lifter valley, right around that power range? Especially without proper tuning?).

 

I have yet to see one of these blocks split....

Some guys with single turbo 3400s are getting over 400 HP.

I wouldn't say never.... I have a recipe, if I stick with it and not change to a completely different engine....

 

That's the old 5.0L Ford that breaks in half. But that's usually just past 600 RWHP.

 

A 2.8 with iron heads at 500 hp.......
Gonna need 15+ psi and a 150 shot.

Even though I don't want to do it either, it just makes sense: hybrid. Probably a 3400 at least if you are serious about 500 hp.

 

well i couldn't think of everything, the heads are aluminum, the 85s + are aluminum i thought, the 81-84s are the iron right? and yeah i did plan on getting new heads, slipped my mind to mention haha. and yeah its gonna cost 3,000 so far with only the basics so far haha. but i just have this attachment to my v6 for some reason, don't ask, just nod and give advice haha

 

None of the F-car V6s ever got aluminum heads. FWD cars did, but not in '85. '85 was the year that MPFI replaced carburetors. That's it.
I'm still new to V6/60 performance myself, so I may get this next part wrong, but as I understand it, the best heads are the 3500 heads, and to use them, you need the 3.4L block from a '93-'95 F-car.

 

yeah i've been trying to look up the parts i've wanted, like rebuild kits and all that jazz, if anyone knows good heads for the 2.8 i'd appreciate a link, that i haven't found yet, and also universal roller tappets, the flat tappets i've heard bad things about. but i'm not sure if they'd fit with the stroker kit i found for it. idk haha. gotta get more information! and anyone know where i can get a posi axel for cheap? scrap yards yatta yatta. and how bout manual transmissions? i want the manual tranny and gauges with the shift light

 

Your stroker 2.8 proposal is nothing but a 3.1 by a different name.
Yes, there are problems with non-roller lifters, because of the modern oils lacking ZDDP. But there ZDDP additives, and there are specialty oils.
You can get your 2.8 heads ported, and gain some flow. But not like the 3500 heads, and those can be ported for even more flow.
Even those aren't the ultimate. There's the TwinDualCam 3.4. But that's getting off topic. Still, those heads could bolt to your block, except your bores are too small. And the only way to make them large enough, for either the TDC heads or the 3500 heads, is the '93-'95 3.4 block.
It's the same on the outside as your 2.8, so noone could call your bluff. Just get one, and proceed from there. Besides, they're a stronger casting anyway, so more likely to survive 500 HP.

 

Gonna provide some insight here, first off you definitely won't hit 500 hp on iron heads, or at least its extremely unlikely, maybe if you threw enough money at it, wringing out every last bit of power it had to give, but even then, I doubt it. I doubt you will see 380 hp either, you should see that much torque however, but hp on iron heads will probably be around 300, maybe as high as 320ish.
2ndly, a 3400 is not a gen 1, they have reinforced webbed lifter valleys that the gen 1 blocks don't have, and its not the power that cracks the gen 1s, its the revs, though of course revs=hp, they tend to crack at the lifter valley when run at particularly high rpms for extended periods, like say 6k+ rpm on a track.

If you want 500+ hp it can be done with aluminum heads, though its going to take a fairly decent amount of boost, you can't just swap in a roller cam either, it will take some fabrication work to get some anti rotation bars setup on the lifters, also idk why the guy above me mentioned the tdc heads, yes the bolt holes line up, but nothing else does, the oil passages, water passages, not to mention what it would take to work out the timing, its not viable which is why it hasn't been done, and I'm sure the lack of aftermarket for that engine didn't help either, no one even makes cams for it that I know of, same goes for the quad 4 oddly, which is a shame cause that engine has a high output for its displacement.

 

I didn't realize that a 3.4 / TDC hybrid couldn't be done. Oh well.

 

I looked long and hard at bolting a set of 3.4 DOHC heads to a pushrod block, my idea was to retain the single cam and make some cantilevers to operate the valves, but the pushrods would be passing through intake ports and that would take away from the reason for going with the DOHC heads in the first place.

 

Just read the "how to get the most power/speed out of your v6" stickie. Just about everything you need to know is there. And there's no way you're getting 500hp out of an iron head 2.8 with 15 psi & a 150 shot. I put a 200 shot and 15 psi through mine and it wasn't close.

 

^Really? (i remember your thread, but didn't know it was that underwhelming)
What level do you think you were at?

 

Still in the 300 range. Made ungodly torq though, 1-2 shifts were painful and brought the rear out occasionally. Mind you the exhaust seats were well worn and probably leaking terribly.

 

yeah but ur turbo was maxed at 250 crank hp it dosent matter how high u cranked the boost alls u were doing was making the air hot.

still wish u could have bolted a t3/t4 on ur motor 15 psi would have made dbl the power of that tiny lil t3

 

Biggest reason its hard to make hp on these engines is they don't breathe well high in the rpm range, and when you boost it all goes to torque, lots of torque, but generally that's what most people really want anyways, though most people think its all about hp, its not at all, hp is only good if you're trying to crack 180 mph+, but 9/10x when you want to go fast you won't be going nearly that fast, when you're drag racing someone down the straight, you want torque, just some more info for the OP.

 

The ones used in midget racing were pushing near 500 with a Hilborn system.

 

whats a hillborn system? and what exactly engine is it pushing nearly 500 hp? making sure we're on the topic. and if some of you are saying to swap engines, like 3.4, two reasons i'm trying to avoid swap is because i hate electrical, i hate hate hate it. if you know a quick flip i can buy or make so i don't have to route wires or any silly business, link or explain please, i can solder fine, i just hate to mess with crap thats electrical haha. and oh, how expensive would a swap be, from motor to tranny to driveshaft and what not?

 

Those are also the ones that discovered the lifter valley issue I do believe, lol.

 

Hilborn/Kinsler/Mechanical injection:







And on my uncle's T-bucket with a SBC:


To install the 3.4 requires no modification of wiring when dropping in the 3.4 swap using your existing injection and related parts.

 

N/A out of a sixer? Wow

You'll be chirpin' gears and pullin' brodies in no time if you can hack the money...

 

It was kinda of a stretch as I do belive it was a 3.2, not a 2.8 but I know it wasn't a 3.4, almost think it was a detuned 3.4 for some reason.

Had to of been 5+ years ago a members in here bought the last known one that was a left over display model like ya see in big shops. Looked like a nascar engine with all the external hyper fancy goodies.

I never delete anything and know I got pics somewhere but have yet to run across them.

 

There's no electrical with the 3.4 swap. You're just unplugging connectors, then re-plugging them. And no 2 are the same, so you can't confuse them, and each one has a clip on one side, so they only go one way. It's fool-proof.
You just have to use the 3.4 injectors. Then the 2.8 electronics run the 3.4 just fine.
My swap started with a used 3.4 for $125, plus the gasket set added $100, then you need normal stuff like fresh spark plugs, and a new oil and filter change.
But just doing the 3.4 swap the cheap and easy way only gets you to 160 HP and 200 TQ. But it also brings a good bit more potential for future upgrades.
I'm not sure how much power my amateur porting will add, but porting the lower intake manifold was very easy. The heads aren't too bad.

 

It's been done many times with a sixer....



"Good things come in small packages. Compared to a V8, a Buick V6 is rather diminutive, except when it comes to power. Jim Ruggles' Grand National Sportsman engines produce 530+ horsepower from 274 cubic inches. Even without a hand-held calculator, that figures out to 1.94 horsepower per cubic inch, an impressive figure for any engine on one four-barrel carburetor and gasoline"....