300 hp V6s are all the rage!

It seems like the Big 3 all have their own 300 hp V6 that they are putting into just about every car around. There are plenty of manual transmission'd cars available as well as very good (8 speed or so) automatic transmission that will actually hold in a gear making them an acceptable option for autocross.

Not too many years ago 300 hp was considered V8 territory, the Bullit Mustang only had 335 I believe.

They all seem to be all aluminum so in theory they should be reasonably light, and if the V6 in the Dodge pickup is any indication, they appear to be quite compact.

SO.........which one would be easiest to transplant into something else?

Is one brand any easier to transplant without all those silly sensors, or are the sensors themselves easy to figure out & use?

To me it seems like this is a no-brainer for the engine to transplant into small cars, Locosts, or anything that needs a good fun factor and a reasonable gas mileage that you want to have some street manners.

Do any of them have standalone ecus or wiring harnesses available anywhere?

Why would you choose one over another?

I think the aftermarket at large still has some work to do in figuring out the whole CAN-BUS situation. That's the biggest hurdle for the new wave of engine donors currently as I see it.

I've been thinking along these lines when it comes to half ton trucks. Are these base V6s still fodder for fleets and cheapskates, or do they really stand on there own but just overshadowed by the available V8s?

I don't know that I'd exactly call them "compact". Being both DOHC and of narrower angle, they're actually rather tall and are not overly narrow either...But are stll ~3/4 the length of a V8.

That being said, I think they're great power plants and would love to be able to use one in a project someday. Unfortunately, they're still just not that well supported compared to V8's, or even I4T's. For small spaces, I'd also be interested in the similar performing pushrod V6 from the newer GM trucks, even if largely forgotten by...well...just about everybody.

Ford is selling a controls pack for swapping the 3.5 ecoboost V6 into other cars, but it goes for $2300. I believe a few people have been successful in hacking the OEM controller and wiring harness to make it work.

The GM LFx engines seem to work with the same tricks used to control the LSx series of engines.

I myself cant get the idea of an LFX MGB GT out of my head. Been warned that the LFX is a bit like a German luxury car in that if ANYTHING goes wrong with it, a replacement engine is cheaper than the repair.

In reply to NOHOME:

Well yeah, when you can buy the whole engine for peanuts, why pay for pistachios.

Well unless you want to pony up for Ford's control pack or similar, I'd imagine you'd need to get one without direct injections. That takes the Ecoboosts and the New Chevy 4.3 out of the picture.

The Pentastar is a sweetheart of an engine, and the 8 speed ZF is a great automatic.

RossD wrote: Well unless you want to pony up for Ford's control pack or similar, I'd imagine you'd need to get one without direct injections. That takes the Ecoboosts and the New Chevy 4.3 out of the picture. The Pentastar is a sweetheart of an engine, and the 8 speed ZF is a great automatic.

Most of the 300hp V6's are NA, and PFI. DI and turbo adds 50-100hp (with a little less displacement).

Not to say the NA motors are super easy to run with an aftermarket ECU- most have TIVCT and electronic throttle.

For a while now I've had a list of vehicles I'd like to drop the GM 3.6 into. C4, GMT400 RCSB, third gen Firebird, Caprice, and a slew of non-GM rides.

Here's a guy swapping an LFX into an NA Miata racer: Linkage

The 300hp v6 is, to me, the harbinger of the 'good old days' i waited a long time for and have now been here for another long time. I came up on cars in the 90's and even though there were plenty of powerful v8 cars around, i was looking at the technology and wondering why we didn't already have 300hp v6s. To me, that was a sweet spot that would make most cars fast with good economy. Plus, some of the cars of the day were straight up embarassing from a technical standpoint, like the ~220hp 4.6L Mustang. The 3.8L Camaro was almost as fast, and I figured with another 100hp it'd be preferable to the v8 that made only a little over 300hp anyway. GM actually had a ~280hp v6 in 1990. Link Japan got v6s with close to 300hp in the 90s too. Took USA market a good long while to get there. Pretty sure i'd rather have a 350hp 370Z over a 450hp v8 Camaro even after Camaro got a great redesign. Loving the 300hp 6cyl in my 911 too.

To me, the most impressive application of 300hp v6s so far has actually been the Ram pickup. A 3.6/8spd Ram is so much faster and less E36 M3ty than anyone in the 90s could have imagined, it's almost mind blowing. I havent driven the ~300hp v6 Chevy and Ford yet, but they came years later anyway.

The 300hp v6 from dodge first caught my attention when they were marketing it in there mini vans. I remember thinking that having one stripped out as a delivery vehical would be really fun. I am not sure they ever offered it that way.

To echo the two other comments here, I am a big Pentastar fan. Now, an OHC V6 is not going to be "small" but they are probably smaller than OHC V8s.

It's a sweetheart of an engine. I just took mine on a 5000 mile roadtrip, from crossing dry creekbeds, dozens of miles on dirt roads, climbing from sea level to 9500 feet, stop and go in city gridlock and 90 mph through empty highways. It never returned less than 27 mpg, and that was with the A/C constantly on, in a heavy brick of a minivan, fully loaded with kids and luggage.

Not to mention they did the oil filter right, it's an element-type right on top of the engine. Also they are in everything, so parts are never going to dry up.

I went on a job interview once for a company I won't name in Detroit, and they had a dozen Ford mod motors on dynos. The guy confided in me that Ford rated them for 320 but some issue with the intake manifold was putting them below 300 and it was going to stay that way for a while.

Just think, now a minivan is making that power.

Just for comparison's sake, why not an ecoboost 4 as a swap candidate? In Mustang trim they make over 300 hp, mount longitudinally, and mate to a RWD transmission.

What's interesting about these high HP V6s is will we see more people put them in cars over turbocharging. RX-8s, homemade kit cars, FR-S/BRZs have too little power for many people (that's not my opinion), Miatas, and a few other cars would work well. Keeping all the sensors and using the factory harness and ecu would make them easier to transplant to older cars, because you don't have to make ecu changes for the engine to work, or to not have an engine light on all the time from a deleted sensor. I think many C4 Corvette owners wouldn't lean to doing a V6 engine swap, mostly because of the V8 heritage the car has. You could convince some to do it if they have the older pre-LT1 engine cars and were daily driving it, and want good power and improved fuel economy.

In reply to Mr_Clutch42:

The big hurdle with using these as swap candidates is the physical size. DOHC V engines take up a lot of space, and it's all up high which is bad for swapability and raises the CoG. I'd be surprised if RX-8s or BRZs have the available real estate for something like this.

Add to that the controls issue, requiring keeping tons of extraneous factory modules/wiring, or the hassle and cost of having the rare CAN-BUS expert pare down everything.

All of this is a big reason why the LS platform is the swap of choice. It's really compact, readily available, easy to control, and makes great power.

dean1484 wrote: The 300hp v6 from dodge first caught my attention when they were marketing it in there mini vans. I remember thinking that having one stripped out as a delivery vehical would be really fun. I am not sure they ever offered it that way.

The pentastar Minivans feel detuned compared to the charger. I know hp ratings are different, maybe it's gearing too. They're peppy but they don't launch like the car does.

I like that we can have a v6 fullsize kid friendly sedan that will throw you in the seat harder than my c4 did, but at the same point 14's used to be a damn quick street car and now it's normal territory. So the older cars that used to feel faster now feel pedestrian, and now i must LS swap the everything to stay ahead.

In the 90's when my 140hp lumina was turning an 18.1 second quarter mile, if you had told me that the equivalent priced car would have more than 2x the power, more weight, insanely better brakes and comfort, and is exponentially quicker? I probably would have laughed and still done my 215hp 3.4 DOHC engine swap and been happy with my 75 more HP.

I am definitely all about the new v-6s. The fact that my wife's '14 Impala is huge and comfy, can get 30 mpg on a trip, handles reasonably well, and is a weapon from 40 to 80 mph impresses the E36 M3 out of me.

It also makes me feel sad about the "hot" engine I did in rhe early 90s that was only 270 horsepower at the wheels.

The 300hp v6 from dodge first caught my attention when they were marketing it in there mini vans. I remember thinking that having one stripped out as a delivery vehical would be really fun. I am not sure they ever offered it that way.

So, funny thing.. an empty Ram ProMaster 3.6 (which is huge!!) runs a 16.2 quarter mile. Compare that to my old 1993 Dodge Dynasty 3.3L which also ran 16.2, which was actually fast back then (see comparable Lumina @ 18.1 above).

Another funny Pentastar fact.. a 2dr 3.6/manual Wrangler runs low 15s in the 1/4 stock. That's about the same as all the sporty coupes of the early 00's (top trim eclipse, tiburon, celica, etc) and as quick as a 94-98 V8/auto Mustang.

Vigo wrote: So, funny thing.. an empty Ram ProMaster 3.6 (which is huge!!) runs a 16.2 quarter mile

But that stops looking good when you compare it to the Ford Transit vans with RWD and the 3.5 Ecoboost. It's not much faster out of the factory, but the Ecoboost in the vans is de-tuned quite a bit compared to the pickup version, so there should be lots of room for easy improvement.

Although I still like the idea of taking a 2wd reg cab / short bed ecoboost F-150 chassis and making something along the lines of a giant exocet

STM317 wrote: All of this is a big reason why the LS platform is the swap of choice. It's really compact, readily available, easy to control, and makes great power.

That's why I think a new GM (pushrod/90*) 4.3L V6 crate engine with controls pack would be cool: It's in the ballpark of Gen III 4.8L/5.3L outputs, and has similar width/height, but is only 3/4 the length and all-aluminum as standard...So it should fit even better into small cars, and be equivalently lighter too.

So the GM is a pushrod engine and the Ford and Mopar is DOHC?

My only experience with these is in a rented Dodge pick up and I was shocked when I opened the hood and found the V6. I thought it was a V8.

It looked pretty small fore & aft as well as side to side. The visible electronics and wiring looked quite simple too.

What sensors would be a hassle to transplant into another vehicle and therefor making a complete transplant of ecu & all an issue?

I like the idea of no ecoboost, just a solid smooth power band with little to go wrong.

GM has both a 3.6 DOHC and a 4.3 OHV. The former is in everything but the trucks, the latter is exclusively in the trucks.

Drove one of the 2017 V6 Camaros in April on a business trip for several hundred miles. It was very entertaining both in a straight line and around the corners. Did not like driving in traffic since it is so hard to see out the rear, but great fun and sounded amazing. I would take one with a 6 speed manual, this would make a great drivetrain in a lighter car. Any reason you can't run it with a megasquirt?

Driven5 wrote: GM has both a 3.6 DOHC and a 4.3 OHV. The former is in everything but the trucks, the latter is exclusively in the trucks.

I had a 4.3 in a Safari van from the 90's, is that the same engine? Does it make 300 hp?

Oh, and isn't it cast iron block?