I know a lot of f-body fans, especially on this website, will flame me for this, but I've been in the process of building my 96 firebird into a drift car. Personally, I've never been one for drag racing, and as much as i love grip racing, there's just something intoxicating to me about tossing a car sideways into a corner at high speed, and controlling something most people think is uncontrollable. Before anyone gets too pissy, I started with a v6 chassis. it was a 1500 dollar car, not an immaculate ws6 or anything.

Now that that's out of the way, i'll explain my thought process here to give some insight. I've been struggling to decide what I wanted to do for power. for a v6, the 3800 is great. dead reliable, i can beat on it all day long, and it takes it. however, while its got a bit of get up and go, it's far from fast, and with me wanting to get into some drift comp's. i need more power. 400-600 range is plenty. My original thought was to turbo the 3800, but my particular motor is a higher mileage example, and the most I've seen people making comfortably on stock internals is around 350-400 at the tire. while thats plenty of power, I have a feeling that using that motor in a drifting aspect will end in catastrophe. So that's out, I began looking for another motor to use. I do not want to use an ls, as awesome of a motor as they are, every f-body in existence has one, and i just want to go a different route. With my build being a drift build, I looked to some I6's. the most common I6 for drifting is the toyota Jz series of engine. I've seen a few people put them into f-bodies, but I'm not huge on the idea of putting a toyota engine into a gm car. on top of that, theyre iron blocks, making the weight balance rather nose heavy.

SOOOO, this is where I'm at now. the vortec 4200. I've known about this engine for a while, but never really seen too many people using it... that is, until recently. I stumbled upon a page on the third gen forum of a guy putting one into an iroc vert, as well as the same guy helping to put one into a mk3 supra. then i found the company Limeswap, who basically specialize in these. theres also a guy on youtube by the username Nivlac, who has one in a studebaker... all of them turbo, all of them making rather good power. Then a few months ago, Hot rod garage got one, tossed injectors in it, bolted a turbo to the factory exhaust manifold, and on 7 psi of boost made 400hp with no issues. that had me really interested.

So, this is going to be my engine of choice, but I havent been able to find much in the way of weight and dimensions. google says it weighs 470 pounds full weight, but being an all aluminum 6, I find that somewhat hard to believe. just sounds a little too heavy, even given theyre a fairly large motor. basically, has anyone on here had one out of a car that can give a better estimate/ and or confirm its weight? I do not have an engine as of yet, because I'm trying to find a 2006+ model year engine because of the revised head, theyre just a bit harder to source than the 2002-2005 years.

any/all help is greatly appreciated.

thanks!!

 

Why not ask Limeswap, as you say, they specialize in those goofy *** inline misfits...

 

well my appologies, i thought this was the hybrid/swap forum... Am I not allowed to ask a question to my fellow F-body owners? like I said, I love the ls, but everyone and their uncle has ls's in their F-bodies. I want to do a unique swap for my relatively unique build, and the 4200 is an awesome platform to do so. if you were going to be so negative, why comment at all?

 

if it was me....

grab a supercharged 3800 from craigslist. Plenty of good working examples in old rusty buicks that no one wants anymore

swap the guts over to your 3800 (set up for RWD) and turbo. You're gonna get WAY more support from the 3800 community then the relatively non existent community of people swapping 4200's. Plenty of people making 400+ on the 3800

https://zzperformance.com/collections/3800

 

I'll pile on to bobcratch's suggestion -- while you're looking for weights, better take some HEIGHT dimensions on the big 6. DOHC on a straight-up straight six is gonna be TALL - suspect that's gonna pose problems in the application you're pondering. Unless this is one of those - cut a hole in the hood and let all the stuff that won't fit just stick out - kind of swaps. In which case - never mind.

 

I had not heard of this engine before but upon looking it up I think it’s cool. It would definitely be an odd ball swap but that’s cool to.
I say go for it.

 

correct me if i'm worng, but arent the blocks identical between the fwd and rwd 3800's? in theory i could just swap heads/intake manifold if i were to do that, though i'm still leaning towards the i6

thanks!

 

I had though of that, but the guy I mentioned on the third gen forums with one in an iroc had his under the factory hood, so i see no reason as to why I wouldnt be able to make it fit under a 4th gen, especially if i were to choose to go with a ram air or cowl hood.

Thanks!

 

Found this from another guy thinking about swapping in the inline 5 or inline 6.

“They have a forum section, and I found a picture with engine dimensions, looks like it is basically 30" high x 30" long and 17" wide w/o accessories:
EDIT
The weight is around 400 pounds...”

As mentioned before - 30” tall is gonna be a challenge I think...but perhaps there’s more room than I remember.

 

Thanks! where did you see that? I went through the search bar and couldnt find much of anything about the atlas series on here

 

I googled vortec 4200 dimensions - it was one of the hits on the first page

 

To bad you ain't 50 miles out side stl . I got this one for sale but........ It's got 258,000 mi believe it or not every thing works runs and drives ,hood is peeling paint. A lot ove service engine lights on for bad cats/iac and who knows what else, would be a good start for you 600bucks too bad you ain't closer man.

 

https://gmtnation.com/forums/threads...library.16738/

https://www.trailvoy.com/threads/eng...ensions.72165/