Here's My Iroc which was sold and now residing in Montana (Go to page 2 for the GN)
I've owned it for almost 11 years. It came from the factory with a 305 and a carb (Can you say SLOW?) I've spent way too much $ on several differnt engine combinations, including; 350 to replace stock 305, 383 w/ aluminum heads, 385 w/ weiand blower, '89 Vette L98 with TPI. The fastest of these engine combos was the 385 with the weiand 144 blower, but it only ran a 13.8 in the quarter and got real bad gas mileage (4). I've also had a few different rear end ratios, the stock were 2.73's, then 3.73's, and now 4.11's. In the future because of the Turbo V6, I'll be switching to a 3.23 or 3.43. The Iroc had the Vette motor in it when I was lucky enough to have found the wrecked '86 Buick T Type.
This is the engine that was in that T-Type, a ton of dirt!
The Buick T-Type is the same thing as a Grand National minus the Black paint, trim and black/gray interior. Aside from the damage the car only had 67,000 miles on it. Can you believe I drove it onto the trailer to get it home!?!.
The engine in the T-type doesn't look like much right now, does it!? The car sat for about 2 and half years before I found it. That's 2.5 years of dust added to the engine that was filthy to begin with!
INSTALL OF 3.8 DRIVETRAIN:
To get the V6 and the 200R4 to fit into the Camaro, many modifictions had to be made. First I ordered a Spohn engineering adjustible torque arm/ tranny mount. It is quite a nice piece of machinery, but it is VERY heavy. This allowed me to use the 200R4. For the motormounts I had read many "rumors" about the TTA mounts and the GN mounts. For me, I used the Frame pads off the T-Type and New Grand National motor mounts. The down side to this is that the frame pads must be welded to the crossmember. The 200R4's dipstick & dipstick tube had to be shortend 2" to fit underneath the top of the firewall lip. Now that I had the motor and tranny installed I found out that the driveshaft out of the Camaro was about 4" too short to fit, and the one out of the T-Type was about 5" too long! So I took the driveshaft and had it shortened/balanced and a new u-joint put in. For the GN/T-type motor to fit in a 3rd gen, you can't use the A/C compressor and must use a A/C delete pulley, (This is why TTA heads are different). I got the driveshaft installed and it fit perfect. I had to make all new fuel line/return line because after all my engine combos, the fuel line was pretty "hacked" up! The oil filter comes extremely close to the idler arm, and I can't use the intercooler shroud because of the stock Single electric fan, that and the sway bar & frame brace hits the bottom of it.
The only modifications I did to V6 before Dropping it in was the 42.5 (009's) injectors, adj. fuel pressure regulator, an RJC "power plate" which distributes air better, and a Dutweiler neck for the intercooler. I used the Radiator out of my '87 Grand National (I had left after replacing it with a new one) so I could use the Oil cooler and built in tranny cooler. The wiring plugged right into the dash harness on the passenger side, but the engine harness had to be spliced into the drivers side bulkhead.
My new license plate even came in while I was first firing up the V6, what timing!
Yeah, Yeah I know that most of you are thinking "WHAT, A V6 IN AN IROC!?!?!? (Ever seen a
'89 Trans Am pace car?)
But the 3.8 V6 weighs less than 200 pounds, has 245 HP STOCK, and along w/ the mods, it'll put me easily in the 12's along with 18MPG in town, and around 26MPG on the Freeway.
UPDATE: 8/8/02, destroyed my tranny on Friday Aug. 26th. Hadn't even had it running 2 weeks! Wasn't even beating on the car when it went out either! Now I only have 1st and reverse. So for the next few weeks, I'll be helping a friend rebuild it (I can finally learn something about transmissions) an I'll be putting in a Performance Trans 3200 9"11" converter. I'll be putting all the goodies in the rebuild including a Level 10 Shift kit, Art Carr 3rd gear clutch pack, Art Carr billet Servo and some other stuff. Since the Tranny and engine will be in better shape and have fewer miles, I'll be putting my PT51 Turbo and the SMC alky kit in the Iroc too. Hopefully I'll have everything in and tuned long before November 9th when the event in Las Vegas is.
The Iroc sits on a full polyurethane bushing set w/ Jamex lowering springs, and 17" x 8" Boyd Cottington "timeless" rims w/ 255-40-17 Yokahoma AVS tires. Has a 4.10 rear but will be swapped to either 3.42's or 3.73's for the V6. Already has a driveshaft loop, 6 point roll bar
Leather interior, 5 pt harness on drivers side, a custom made aluminum gauge cluster filled w/ autometer ultralights.
It has a 4" fiberglass cowl mounted on the Iroc hood (changing to 2" fiberglass cowl hood soon), '92 Z28 rear Spoiler. Headlight & Tail light covers, Sherwin Williams Base/Clear paint, and limo window tint that I'm pulled over for all the time! Here's my NEW COWL DECAL (Showing the best of both worlds, Buick Power and Camaro handling) Provided by BFH (Engraver 1, Thanks!)
Questions about the Iroc or the engine swap in process? Comments? E-mail me!
Roc8seven@comcast.net
