Here's a page for Mom's 1989 LeSabre sedan. It was Dad's company car, bought new by Shelby Diecasting Co. in 1989. I remember the day it was brought home. We wondered who that stranger was who pulled up in the yard! It was dad in his new company car! After the lease was up, we bought the car from the company.

It ran 330,000 miles with no more than normal upkeep before the transmission started making a grinding noise. After tearing it down, I found one bad bearing that had damaged the planetary gearset. Replaced the gears and bearing with good used spares I had on hand, and freshened up the rest of the trans with a TransGo system correction kit. (nice to have 2 cars with same trans and lots of spare parts)

Then at 370,000 miles the engine started to loose coolant out the tailpipe. It had earned a rebuild after all these miles so I pulled it out and tore it down. Only problem was the intake manifold gaskets!

Even the venerable 3800 can be improved, so I had my machinist (Northport Machine Shop) surface the heads and block to raise the compression from 8.5 to 9.5. The block was bored .030 over. Bearings are standard. Before assembly I lightly ported the heads and and manifolds (intake and exhaust) to match up better.

Finally the ECM was tweaked with CATS RT Tuner. I gave it a little richer cranking mixture (had always taken 2 tries to start up). Then enriched the WOT mixture and gave the power-enrichment mode spark a little more advance.
Result of all this is a much smoother engine with greater torque across the whole range of RPM. The high-RPM power is most noticably increased. It is far quicker and more rev-happy than it was before.  Long live the MIGHTY 3800!!!

This is Mom's midnight blue LeSabre sedan

This is the 3800 Series I engine back in the car after I rebuilt and modified it.

Above is the engine longblock after I reassembled it with the shaved block and heads.

Above is the complete powertrain ready to drop back into the car.

Another view of the engine with restored wiring harness.

Above is a before and after picture of the cyl heads, you can see how much more streamlined the path of air is after cleaning up the valve bowls.

Also gasket-match ported the intake and exhaust ports and manifold. This engine has a very nice one-piece cast Tuned Port manifold (not shown)

Above is the rear exhaust manifold. Both banks of cylinders join together and the exhaust exits here. GM left a bad restriction here; there was a half-inch lip in this opening which I ground away.

1989 was a good year for the 3800. This was a transitional model before an emissions and fuel economy regulation change. GM calibrated the 3800 to be a fuel economy engine in 1989. This car gets well over 30 MPG in spite of it's weight and large engine size. The transmission gearing, and ECM calibration contribute to this. After my engine modifications the milage is even better, in the 32 MPG range.

My mother drives this car daily and enjoys it alot.  She says some people have asked her about it because it looks different.  It is so "square" and all the new cars are "rounded."