3400 swap into RWD truck application

[keitholivier]

Well, I'm floored. Naive I guess.

Now a question to those of you who know the "iron" 3.4L V6 and the 4L60E tranny: Considering that the starter mounts "below" the centerline of the crankshaft, will having the starter in this position cause interference with the 4L60E bell housing ?

Does anyone know the outer diameter of the flexplate on the 3.4 Iron motor ? If all else fails, I could make up a 3/4" thick adapter plate that accepts a flange mount starter, which would of course require a custom machined flex plate (or at least spacers and longer bolts for the torque converter).

Now that I understand the fundamental difference between the 3.4 Iron and 3400 (aluminum head) motors I am able also to grasp some of the tuning issues. Since I have already forked over the cash for the Camaro ECU, what I will do in the interim is use this ECU to get the motor running and as a transmission controller. When I get far enough into it, I could build up a microsquirt or evaluate one of the FWD ECUs for the primary engine controller. The Tranny controller would have to see enough signals to believe the motor was running and know how to shift and the engine controller would have to believe one was running a manual transmission. One way or another I would have to disable the injector drivers for the tranny controller, since these sink a fair amount of current and I believe they can detect an open or short circuited injector.

Anyway, the workload is certainly increasing. I would like to stay with the 4L60E tranny. It was in production until relatively recently and I hate being tied to older hard to find bits. (like the >$2k 97 Venture transmission and my Toyota "special" dually rear axle)....

Thanks for the heads up everyone.
Keith

[Guest]

Sharkey, are you saying that the (F-Body) 3800 has a driver side mounted starter then? I was under the impression they had a passenger side starter, pretty sure I've seen pictures that indicated this also.

[sharkey]

ok im wrong there, the 3800 and 3.4l rwd are both have the starter on the passenger side. the difference in the bellhousing is just with the starter pocket itself. aside from that, the bellhousing is the same and it would bolt up to a 3400.

[Guest]

ok im wrong there, the 3800 and 3.4l rwd are both have the starter on the passenger side. the difference in the bellhousing is just with the starter pocket itself. aside from that, the bellhousing is the same and it would bolt up to a 3400.

I consider that to be quite the difference, since it can not be just bolted to the FWD version without modification to dlearnace the FWD starter location.

[Greg55_99]

Just to throw some fuel on the fire:

I believe the 82-93 Cadillac Fleetwood used the RWD 200-4R behind the 4.1-4.5L V8. It also has the same bellhousing pattern of the 3400 and, I think, has the starter on the same side.

Greg

[Guest]

ALl 200R4s I have seen have the BOP bolt pattern, not the small corporate pattern.

[Greg55_99]

ALl 200R4s I have seen have the BOP bolt pattern, not the small corporate pattern.

Yep, you're right. I just checked. My bad..

Greg