Some insight into the 3.4L OHV Motor...

[Forced_Firebird]

He doesn't know that a bigger then stock cam will give improvement? I understand a cam TOO big for the setup is not the way to go, but the stock cams are geared towards reliability and gas mileage - not power.

Most bolt-on street motors do best with a mid-sized cam. Over-camming sounds cool at idle and WOT, but isn't alway optimal.

[maxpit]

Nice post...

[3.4SS]

Good stuf but i am wondering what pushrods you used with your conversion

[koolchriscamaro]

Good stuf but i am wondering what pushrods you used with your conversion

ya, i wondered the same thing for the longest, until i did a crap-load of research. Use pushrods off a '91 cavalier with a 3.1
that would be the easiest way to remember it. you can buy the pushrods of rockauto.com for $20. you'll have to have 6 intake valves and 6 exhaust valves and they each cost around a dollar and a half a piece. measurements are intake= 6.042 exhaust=6.389
whatever you do, DO NOT use the 3.4 pushrods. or the pushrods from the donor motor that you get the top end from (they are made for the roller cam and alluminum head combo), which is different than our setup. the '91 cavalier has a flat tappet cam and aluminum heads which is the same combo as russel.
i just recently bought a 3500 top end from john(forcedfirebird) and am fixing to put it on my car in the next two weeks(keeping stock pistons which will give me 11.5 to 1 cpr). fixing to buy a comp 260 cam or possibly bigger. first i have to finish up hooking my megasquirt(in the process). ill keep you posted and feel free to ask any more questions

[jd1666]

Hi there. My name is Russell and I have been here for a while now, posting here and there when I feel that I have information to contribute. I have owned a 3.4L Chevy Camaro since 1996 and have been on a "quest for more power" since I bought it. It's peppy enough from the get go with a manual transmission but the automatic is lacking a little bit. Even with the manual, it still has issues putting out enough power to push the massive 3250lbs that is the car itself. When you add speakers or anything else this becomes a serious hinderance to the car in terms of performance.

I have seen posts regarding the 3.4L engine, and I have seen both facts and fiction on this motor thrown around in an attempt to sway people one way or the other. Thats not what I'm trying to accomplish here. Here is my honest opinion about the 3.4L OHV (204ci) RWD engine that comes in the 1993-1995 F-body (Camaro/Firebird). Most of you will be like "oh great whatever". Those of you that know that I have been here and most often won't post in a thread unless I have something important to voice on the matter will stop and read this. And a few of you will be genuinely curious to know what it is I'm trying to convey. Pull up something to drink and some popcorn, this promises to be a long thread.
--
I have done my share of research on this engine. I even contacted GM and asked them for any information they had on the car. They promptly sent me the GM Rebuild Kit for the 1994 Chevrolet Camaro. It didn't cost me a thing and this little packet included every bit of information, original brochures from 1994, a full detailed listing of all options and factory information on every part of the engine, car, chassis, etc.

It was here that I began, studying and calculating and realizing the first thing about the motor. GM Lied. It wasn't a big lie. The motor is advertised at 207 Cubic Inches, but using valid formulas for calculating CID I came up short at only 204. I rechecked several times and came to the conclusion that GM rounded up the engine size because in reality, the "3.4L" engine is really only 3.35 Liters. Now .05 Liters isnt a huge deal..but when you start with so little, every bit counts.

Armed with this information I began signing up to different boards and clubs with the hopes of finding people who had begun to modify the car and make it work better. I came across a lot of owners who were frustrated because they hadn't found anything created by the aftermarket and had given up and advised me to do the same. My Camaro, is honestly my first car. It's the first car I ever purchased and still runs strong to this day. I didn't let anyone's dismay sway me from my goal of making my car work better for me, and not go out and try to win any awards for the most horsepower or torque or anything like that. When I discovered RKSport and their aftermarket products for the 3.4L, my hopes perked up because I realized that if I saved up enough money I could make my car work better. I began to research different engine shops in the area and stumbled across Norris Racing Tech (NRT) with their 3500 package which promised to make the engine a 3.5 Liter and give you the best performance you could get. But at 3000.00 for the engine package + shipping/handling I wrote that off.

Now I have to digress a little because I realize I skipped a very important point. Most 3.4L owners try too hard. You think that you can take your 3.4L V6 and run out and make it faster than any car on the road. That’s not going to happen. There will always be, whether you own a 3.4L v6 - a 3.8L v6 - a LT1 - LS1 – Vette – Viper – Porsche – Ferrari, a car faster than yours. The thing I realized that if I built the car for me, if I did things I wanted and questioned the conventional wisdom of “that won’t work” I would stumble across the magical mod that would give me a massive boost in the right direction. I stayed on these boards for years, watching people come on and ask, “what’s the best intake, what’s the best exhaust...” and all those things. I watched people rise and get incredible gains and saw people I knew push the limits of the engine and develop supercharger and turbocharger kits for the 3.4L, as well as take and add nitrous to it. There were a couple of “loch ness” stories about a mythical 3.4L out there running 9’s in the ¼ mile, but that person never signed up to this board or any others that I have visited, so that person remains a mystery as to whether or not they really exist.

Getting back to my topic – When I realized that I would have to work harder and think more because the things that people were doing weren’t really accomplishing much, I turned to the actual engine design and I looked at several options. I then realized, in 1999, that Pontiac’s Grand Am GT was making 175hp/205tq from a 3.4L OHV FWD motor. I did research into this engine and found that GM had worked a different path on this motor and it was better than the 3.4 RWD. I did more research into engine design and found that runner lengths help determine how much power and torque the engine gets. I looked at the plenum and runner design on the “3400” engine as well as the 3.4 RWD and realized that the RWD runners were jokes. At only 2” long and without any type of airflow acceleration present, they looked like all they served was a means to get the air from the Y shaped plenum, which once I saw a cross section – laughed at, to the cylinders. That was when I decided then and there that the plenum and air intake system was the 3.4L’s weak point. GM had spent money into making the 3.4 into a “Race style” motor. At 60 degrees the Angle of the V shape is natural. EXACTLY replicating the letter V, the angle between cylinders is 60*. The crankshaft in a six cylinder v-type engine has three throws of 120 degrees. With this combination, it makes the engine perfectly internally balanced. No bad vibrations, hence the lack of balance shaft that the 90 degree 3.8 or 3800 series II engine needs to employ to keep the motor from rubbing things the wrong way.

With that in mind, I kept looking into what I could do to increase the natural power of the engine. And I realized that the FWD heads and intake manifold were direct bolt-on parts. The holes all lined up, and they were aluminum which would shave weight off of the engine. Combined with their increased flow (I had no idea how much at the time) they would add a lot of power to an engine that was struggling. So I did more research and found that the iron heads that came with the RWD engine had been used since the original 2.8L engine came out. No changes had been made by GM. Not till they tried to use the 3.4L as a viable engine for the FWD cars did GM even consider making the 3.4L into a “performance” engine. Because of that the 3.4L has become the laughing stock of the F-body world. Many people have tried to make this engine perform better and succeeded, and many more have failed. Simply because they aren’t thinking before they throw parts at the motor. Most people think, “I can get an exhaust or intake and it’ll make the car work great!” This isn’t always the case. Most often it requires planning to increase the airflow of the engine to efficiently use such parts. Why? Because the 3.4L is anemic to begin with – GM thought that they could simply increase the bore and stroke of the engine and throw a “performance cam” into it and it would work fine. This isn’t the case because the plenum and air intake and exhaust systems are so poorly designed that it suffocates the motor without anyone giving it a second thought. While everyone is putting bigger throttle bodies and porting and polishing heads, they are neglecting the most important idea – “you engine only flows as well as the worst bottleneck.” With that in mind, ponder this thought: I asked James Montigny for his flowbench data from Norris Racing Tech on his heads. And then I asked a good friend of mine who specializes in the FWD 60 degree motor for a stock flowbench of the “3100” heads I had pulled from a 1996 3.1L engine and put on my car.

The results shocked me. The stock heads from a 1996 FWD 3.1L engine flowed as good as the heads that were bolted to Tiago’s car (many of you know him as the one who developed a turbocharger for the 3.4L and pushed it to the edge). Tiago had gotten his heads from James Montigny previously and James had the NRT engine package. I went to NRT’s site to learn that the full engine package came with the 900.00 option full port/polish and valve job. You can digest that for a minute before carrying on. GM had managed to work the heads on the FWD engines so perfectly that they flowed as well as taking a set of the iron heads and paying someone to R&D a perfect portjob on them. 900.00. Using the aluminum heads means you have 900.00 to use elsewhere.

what if i dont have any popcorn?

[jankrom]

I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time out to post this. My son and I are embarking on this journey to make his 94 a supper sleeper lol.
I've never built a V-6 before lots of V-8's.
so thank you so much for giving us a place to start!

[1fastcamarosss11]

I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time out to post this. My son and I are embarking on this journey to make his 94 a supper sleeper lol.
I've never built a V-6 before lots of V-8's.
so thank you so much for giving us a place to start!

that's pretty cool that you got use out of this thread and it is 3 years old.
good stuff.

[Black34v6]

wow. i had completely forgotten this post existed. thanks to forced firebird for picking up the slack!

sorry ive been away so long. been uber-busy

[unam20]

Wow this is great, I was honestly getting ready to give up on my 3.4L Camaro...but I have to admit I have reconsidered after reading this first post.

So what I need are (let me know if Im missing anything please):

1996 or 1999 Grand Am GT
aluminum heads, pistons, upper intake/TB, fuel rails, injectors, 3400 throttle body ( all these parts preferably 99' for better performance)

+Headers (Pacesetter/RK)...I would buy them for the Camaro or Grand Am? Also I have a K&N Intake that helps my car out some right now, would I be able to keep that or do I absolutely have ditch it and go with the Grand Am's intake?

This is my first car, got in a wreck once was told to get a new one but u know ur first car is always special so I paid $1000 total (parts and labor) to fix it.Plus Im currently having problems with the computer's security system, need a another one since with the current one the car will not start reliably, the security light will turn on in the speedometer board when I turn the switch and will not let the car start. Once again Im being told to ditch the car but I love my car so no way am I doing that. It was a hand-me down from my older bro. He has a Trans Am now, basically the same car that black34 kept up with (z28 o\convertible). I'd love to be able to keep up with the Trans Am and make my bro regret handing me down what he considered a slow car. Anyways sorry for telling this story which none of u guys probably care about but Im pretty excited about this. I'd like to prove people who diss my car wrong.

[chris.v]

hi i have a 1995 3.4 bird in great shape with 140k. will you sell me a suitable top end swap kit,prefferably so i can keep existing pistons

[sscamed]

bump

[Forced_Firebird]

hi i have a 1995 3.4 bird in great shape with 140k. will you sell me a suitable top end swap kit,prefferably so i can keep existing pistons

Are you referring to me?

Yes, I sell top ends. Whats your plan for tuning? You really need to build around that.

[Iyyob]

how long does it take for ur top ends to be ready to ship and what about prices ? also any word on the question "

[Forced_Firebird]

how long does it take for ur top ends to be ready to ship and what about prices ? also any word on the question "

Please PM to keep thread on topic

Takes about a week for a fully rebuilt top end, can also add extras if you want, but I need to know what you are looking for exactly.

[lcnumnutz]

WOW, this thread answered more questions than over a dozen phonecalls I have made, I was really leaning towards getting crate v8, then thought about stroking the 3.4 (still a thought if you have any info) but I have really learned alot so Thanks to everyone who has came before...

[Kalo1]

Ok here's the deal... will a 3400 (E code)from a 2000 Grand Am swap into a 94 Firebird 3400 (s-code)? I just got done swapping a motor in my 2000 Grand Am GT about 2 days ago, and today I picked up a 94 Firebird with a good body and a blown motor. I know for a fact that the grand am motor I pulled out of the GA just needs head gaskets replaced and ran great other than the overheating issue,and the firebird motor was half way dismantled when I got it, so who knows what the deal is there. I know the (E code)pushes a bit more horsepower and I would rather use what I already have to save a little money. They are both the 60 degree 3400 so i guess I am unclear as to why the swap wouldn't work.I know this may end up being a stupid question, knowing that the grand am is FWD and the Firebird is RWD. Just trying to work out a game plan and pondering a few ideas, any clairification into if this would or would not be possible be helpfull.

[67rsss]

In a word, no. The S-Code (iron block RWD) is VERY different from the FWD engines.

[Forced_Firebird]

Ok here's the deal... will a 3400 (E code)from a 2000 Grand Am swap into a 94 Firebird 3400 (s-code)? I just got done swapping a motor in my 2000 Grand Am GT about 2 days ago, and today I picked up a 94 Firebird with a good body and a blown motor. I know for a fact that the grand am motor I pulled out of the GA just needs head gaskets replaced and ran great other than the overheating issue,and the firebird motor was half way dismantled when I got it, so who knows what the deal is there. I know the (E code)pushes a bit more horsepower and I would rather use what I already have to save a little money. They are both the 60 degree 3400 so i guess I am unclear as to why the swap wouldn't work.I know this may end up being a stupid question, knowing that the grand am is FWD and the Firebird is RWD. Just trying to work out a game plan and pondering a few ideas, any clairification into if this would or would not be possible be helpfull.

The block mounting bosses are different, the oil pan will hit a stock k member, starter is on the wrong side, along with a few other small items

BUT

if you take the pistons along with complete top end (pushrods won't work) and put it on the 3.4 block as explained earlier in the thread, then you will be making the kind of numbers Russell has been so kind as to post

I will have dyno numbers for an all-out N/A 3.4/3500 soon. 11.56:1 SCR, full roller rockers, SI valves, titanium retainers, LS6 springs, LS1 seats, ported heads, LIM and UIM, UIM TB throat opened up to 65mm, headers, 3" exhaust, double roller timing set, MSD ignition, with an OBD1 piggyback swap for tuning (swap kits coming soon for OBD1.5 to tunable OBD1 ).

[leonard3406]

i have a 2003 grand am gt with a 3.4L V6. i wanna take the catalytic converter off. but what i need to know is will that help me gain power or will that not give me ennught back pressure? what do you guys think?

[coconut_yoshi]

well im very interested in ths....... i just bought a 94 firebird with a 3.4l ..... the only problem is this is my first domestic,.. i used to drift a Nissan 240sx with an inline 6 putting out 350hp/ 347 t... so this car is different im kinda getting made fun of at the track by my buddies so if anyone has a way to speed up this engine fairly cheap let me know...... oh and no comments on the Import its a sore subject lol