3.8 Swap Thread

[keith6110]

Picked up today:

You will love this welder. I have the exact one with the helmet lol. Only good things will come from this welder.

[qnz]

I love people doing uncommon projects. Good luck

[johnygezony]

I love people doing uncommon projects. Good luck

Yeah this is crazy !!! I hope everything works ! You would never think about someone using the old daytona's for their transmissions let alone anything else.

[skyy406]

So i removed the entire engine harness off the old 3.0 and basically there's just an engine and tranny in the engine bay now. I pulled off the lower intake manifold and discovered an obliterated valve in the front bank- center piston.

It's actually pretty badass. I'll have pics in a few days when I pull the head off.

Meaning, even though I only put like 10k on the car since its last Timing Belt- the age- 7+ years are what ruined it. Word to the wise, get it replaced every 5 years for sure.

Megasquirt will arrive tomorrow. Next week I am going to pick up my 5-speed transmssion and Ford EDIS 6 system.

Oh, can anyone send me some pics of what the accessory belt tensioner looks like and its location? The engine I bought doesn't have one, and that will cause problems for obvious reasons. I may be able to adapt the one from the 2.5 (prior to the 3.0) but I'd like some pics to confirm.

Thanks much!

[skyy406]

Here's an update as of 5/2/10

Removed the Radiator and Fans



Top of engine mostly Dismantled



This is why you replace your Timing Belt every 75k or 5 years





Rear header clearance (3.0)





Heads off



Where I cut the duals off. Notice how close the pipes are when the exhaust is on the car. I then bolted the headers and the downpipes to the 3.8 and lined them up. They are way off. Seems that the 3.8L has a different pattern for the exhaust to go. Unfortunately, I am most likely going to have to hack up my rear header and build one. I will take up the mocked up rear header to a local shop and have them make me a 1 off rear long tube header :naughty: I'll probably have them do the front too once its running.







2.5L Crank pulley- I don't think it's supposed to look like that... And also timing cover is all torn up.







Many thanks to doggs330. He supplied me with a A/C compressor. It bolts right to the 3.8L bracket!!!!!



The A/C pulley will have to be shimmed or i will have to use spacers to push it out a little bit so it lines up with the 2.5L tensionor and crank pulley.



The 2.5L alternator and Power steering tensioner bolts right up. I will have to modify the bracket for the alternator- but not very much and certainly not to the extreme that CMC did his. No welding is needed- just some slight massaging with a dremel and all the bolts line up.



That's all for now. Wednesday I am going to pick up my 5-speed transmission....:woot:

[skyy406]

Pulling motor





Deep in thought



Engine out





5-speed transmission from a 1994 Dodge Shadow







The stock Avenger engine mount bolts right up! Thank God, that would have been a major pain in the ass. I can bolt up the stock 2.5L A/C bracket to the 3.8 No problem, just needs about an inch worth of spacing away from the block. Super easy!



Picked up a new angle grinder today :naughty:



I tore down the 3.0 today too. All kinds of metal bits and crap in the oil pan



Here are 2 great pics of the damage to the piston. Hole smashed clean through the piston.

[infliction]

hey if those rods are in good shape it wouldnt be a bad idea to throw them in the 3.8
idk what you plan on doing with that engine once its in. but from what ive seen the rods in the older engines are thicker but all the other measurements are the same.

[SPD_FRK]

Looks like fun so far man, best of luck with everything.

hey if those rods are in good shape it wouldnt be a bad idea to throw them in the 3.8
idk what you plan on doing with that engine once its in. but from what ive seen the rods in the older engines are thicker but all the other measurements are the same.

The 6g72 rods I don't believe fit into the 6g75. The Rod journals are a different size if I remember correctly. If I am wrong and they do fit, throwing in a set of 72 rods (which are shorter), will only drop the compression ratio down quite a bit and he would lose power. The stock 75 rods are good for moderate N/A or light boosted applications, but the best thing is to swap in a set of 6g74 rods as they are direct drop in rods and are thicker than the 75s.

[skyy406]

Looks like fun so far man, best of luck with everything.


The 6g72 rods I don't believe fit into the 6g75. The Rod journals are a different size if I remember correctly. If I am wrong and they do fit, throwing in a set of 72 rods (which are shorter), will only drop the compression ratio down quite a bit and he would lose power. The stock 75 rods are good for moderate N/A or light boosted applications, but the best thing is to swap in a set of 6g74 rods as they are direct drop in rods and are thicker than the 75s.

Your right! Look:

6G74 Rods


6G75 Rods


I also did some work today

Made some spacers with my new Angle Grinder!



Test fitting I have to slide them up a bit



Look how nicely everything lines up now!



About 2mm of space between the A/C bracket and the Oil filter housing.

[keith6110]

nice progress man! Love the pictures, keep them coming. Obviously great custom work. Not many people can do what you're doing.

[skyy406]

nice progress man! Love the pictures, keep them coming. Obviously great custom work. Not many people can do what you're doing.

Thanks man! I'm new to this fabrication stuff actually. I just teach myself as I go along and it works out pretty good.

This is a really fun swap!

[skyy406]

Here's an update!

Found a crack in my a543, going to have it welded :cry:





Installed my new shifter!







CMC here's your pictures of the alternator bracket. I had to grind down a portion of it and also elongate the hole that the bolt goes through.

On the left is a spare bracket i had- untouched



The top one was modified. I merely enlarged the hole slightly.



I had to elongate the hole a lot to get it to line up properly.



The bottom one was modified. I had to grind off about 1/4 inch of material and also angle it to line up with the head.





Notice a washer.



I could have probably not ground the bracket so much but it was difficult to get the bolt to line up properly with the head and also have the washers sit flush against the bracket and the head. Either way- its strong and fits great!



Alternator, tensioner and crank pulley line up!!! Yay!



These stupid mother fuckers. The damn ball joints are seized into the hub/knuckle... WTF both sides. I am going to have to take them to work and have them remove them with the press. Also the passenger side axle is also stuck in the hub. What a mother fucker I tell you. I hate these little stupid things that prevent this project from going smoothly. Also the steering rack end balljoints were also seized into the hub. I had to cut the drivers side one off- but I was able to get the passenger one off the steering rack.



A604 and A543 side by side.







An empty engine bay

[skyy406]

Today's update.

Removed brake pedal assembly.



That hole is where I had my power wire running through the fire-wall. You can see the 3 indentations in the panel. THat is where the factory would have punched out the metal for the master cylinder. Aggravatingly, it is impossible to install the clutch pedal assembly without a hole for the bolt to go through. So I looked at those indents and proceeded to take my drill and dremel to them.

Unfortunately, once I had the holes all punched out I installed the clutch pedal assembly. To my surprise those indents are about 1/2" off. So I had to drill more metal out- which was a pain.



Clutch Master cylinder in!



Resivour in too! I'll take it back off on thursday and paint it all nice like!



Console back in- just waiting on the shift boot.



Now that, is a beautiful thing :jump:

[skyy406]

Does the MIVEC engine come with an Aluminum or Steel flywheel?

[skyy406]

Lots to report today

MIVEC Heads Came in















Valve covers are amazingly clean.



Cam Sensor cover- is severely damaged. The Box they came in was torn to shreds and very poorly handled. They weigh over 80 pounds together and it is likely that someone dropped them during shipping. Also, they are missing the cam gears and who knows what else. I am going to have to buy an Eclipse manual so I can see exactly what parts are missing for the MIVEC actuation.



All sorts of scratches and damage. Who the fuck pried these off with a damn bear claw?







Notice how poorly the aluminum is cast here. In many of the water or oil journals- there is bits of metal left over.





Two bent valves in the rear head.





The heads sure are more complex than my 3.0 ones.



Here are some interesting pictures. The 3.8L lower intake manifold is nearly 0.75" wider than the 2.5/3.0- Same height though.

3.8L on right



The 3.8L block is 1/2 an inch taller than the 3.0 block





It is also the exact same length





But, it is around 1/2 inch wider





My exhaust flange for the rear header i'm making came today!



Also my Front Long Tube header came. Rippmods makes good stuff.







Look at the difference!



The ports on the long-tube header are much bigger too. Really a good free flowing design. Oddly enough you can see how clean my XIRacing header looks (bottom) I guess I had a better gasket than they did or it was sealed better.



What is this? I'll have to take it off to attach the flywheel.



To my dismay. The metal piece that came from the 3.8L does not work with the a543. The bottom piece from the 3.0 Does- and I cant find the top piece Also, The metal piece that came with the 3.8L and the one from the 3.0 Are different thicknesses. I was ready to drop in the 3.8L and a543 and begin fabbing up my tranny mounts, but I did not want to start without advice from you guys. The difference in metal thickness is minute but I do not want anything to go wrong with the pressure plate or clutch or any of that stuff. I am going to drop in the motor and tranny bolted together so that I can make precise tranny mounts. If I make the mounts with the wrong metal piece they will be slightly off and that is something I don't want to have to do twice.

3.8L piece. It does not line up on the bottom at all







Here's the bottom piece from the 3.0- it lines up very well. Unfortunately I don't remember what the top piece looked like and I don't remember if it was broken in 2 or there are in fact 2 pieces. I also don't know how much space there has to be for the clutch and stuff. Or rather, I don't know how much needs to be covered.

[skyy406]

Did a little work today

There are 2 bolts on the rear of the oil pan that stick out a bit. The tranny would hit the left one- so I had to shave off some of the hole.



and shaved



I'll have to shave off that "ear" off the oil pan too so that the tranny---> engine bracket will fit





Front "ear"



Wierdly the 3.0 has 2 bolt holes for the bracket



But the 3.8L does not- the other one was like not finished or something. I suppose I could weld on a bunch of metal and then tap it for a bolt. Do I really need to? Is one bolt enough?









The starter fits just fine- without the bracket in. And the headers don't come any where near the starter which is nice. I have to grind down the bracket that sits behind the starter though. I worked on it for about 30 minutes but didn't get it finished. I prefered not to grind down the starter it self. It'll fit flush and perfect once i'm done.









3.8L and a543 bolted together.



Hopefully I can get all the brackets done wednesday night and then drop the engine in on thursday to make the tranny mounts

[Ruslik]

nice work man
good luck

[Bring380GT]

Engine management can be done with a piggyback unit such as an EManage or the MegaSquirt system. Though there is another alternative such as running a 2001+ Eclipse or Stratus ECU to do full engine management and tuning via ECUFlash.

The ignition system on the 6g75 (MIVEC or Non-MIVEC) is a COP (coil on plug) setup. The only way to control this ignition system to my knowledge currently is to run a full standalone engine management such as AEM. You can setup and run the 6g72 or 6g74 distributor on these engines as it will fit directly into the rear head just the same as the 6g72/74. You will need the 6g74 coolant crossover pipe in order to accomodate for the distributor location. You also need to replace the 6g75 reluctor wheel on the crankshaft with the corresponding 6g72/74 reluctor wheel depending on which distributor you use.

So could you run the bigger 75 injectors 310cc I believe? on the stock eclipse/galant/stratus ecu with out a tune? or would it run not so good? And the only thing really needing to swap in this motor is the distributor, reluctor wheel and coolant crossover pipe? I think I might look into doing another build :) then I would buy myself some of those RPW headers :)

[M-Rod]

So could you run the bigger 75 injectors 310cc I believe? on the stock eclipse/galant/stratus ecu with out a tune? or would it run not so good? And the only thing really needing to swap in this motor is the distributor, reluctor wheel and coolant crossover pipe? I think I might look into doing another build :) then I would buy myself some of those RPW headers :)

Crankshaft position sensor is also different.

[SPD_FRK]

So could you run the bigger 75 injectors 310cc I believe? on the stock eclipse/galant/stratus ecu with out a tune? or would it run not so good? And the only thing really needing to swap in this motor is the distributor, reluctor wheel and coolant crossover pipe? I think I might look into doing another build :) then I would buy myself some of those RPW headers :)

If you swap the 6g75 engine and run from the stock ECU, without making necessary adjustments it will run lean. The same issue happens when you swap in the 6g74, but not to the severity as it would with the 3.8L engine. It is "vital" IMHO that you swap in a flashable ECU, or tune with an Emanage to get the AFR corrected. Besides the AFR issues, timing is another issue that the stock 6g72 ECU will not account for.

If you are not running a full standalone system, then you will need to swap over the distributor. The distributor is sufficient to run N/A even high compression builds like 11:1 setups (proven thoroughly by boostzealot's many builds). If you go turbo, the distributor will be safe up to around 10psi, beyond that you will want to look into upgrading the ignition system (which can be done with an MSD setup). Now, swapping in the distributor you also need to swap over the 72 reluctor wheel, and crankshaft position sensor.

You will need to swap in the 74 coolant crossover pipe, and also the pipe that connects to the water pump. The 75 coolant pipe that connects to the water pump has a small tab that will interfere with the transmission bellhousing. This can be trimmed and it will fit fine. Another note on the 74 coolant crossover pipe is that the coolant pipes run to the heater core are mounted differently. They do not both exit the rear towards the firewall like the 72's. You will need these pipes, or modify the existing to fit (one comes off the top of the crossover pipe and needs to make a 90* bend to the firewall).

The 75 fuel rails are returnless, which we cannot use. You can modify the 75 rails, but it looks like a "hack job" and also can become a restriction for fuel flow (resulting in lean/rich in the front or rear bank, not equal). If you run the Non-MIVEC engine we know the 74 lower intake manifold is a direct swap and this will allow you to run our return style fuel rails, and upgrade later if needbe to larger billet rails from the 3000 GT platform.

The alternator brackets are also different. If you have the 75 alternator this will not affect you. If you use the 72 alternator you need to swap in the 74 passenger side engine mount, as well as the alternator bracket. You can modify the 72 alternator bracket to fit, though I am unsure how that will affect the belt length if you are running the P/S and A/C system.



If you need more information, check out galanttuners.com as the thread there pretty much covers everything including the ECU stuff. Also, Club3g.com has quite a bit of information on this swap as well.