'BAD' GM 3800 L26 V6 Engine Teardown. Why Are These Engines SO GOOD?

Today we take down what could be one of GM's best

engine

s. I know it's a bold statement, but this is a

3800

. These

engine

s have a propensity to outlast every transmission they've been bolted into, outlasting every chassis they've been bolted into so many times. Many of these cars are scrapped because the chassis rots or the transmissions break down, but the

engines

almost always work. These

engines

are easy to maintain. They are excellent in terms of fuel. They have little tension. The parts are cheap. The only real thing I hate about the

3800

is the fact that I can't sell any, I can't make money on them, this is not a motor I would normally stock, this is not something I go out and Target, I don't buy cars that come with the 3800 otherwise I love these. things, GM's 3800 3.8L 90° V6 is actually the old strange-fire Buick 231 V6 that is based on the same tooling as the aluminum 215 V8 from the early '60s.

These engines have been around for a long time and have gone through several different processes. Iterations have been turbocharged and this is actually the final iteration of the naturally aspirated L26. This is coming from a 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix GT with 126,000 M. It is quite premature. I know you guys love those details. This engine actually comes with praise. of automotive in Godfrey Illinois, so I owe everyone a huge thank you for today's

teardown

. Now he told me the first thing I have to do before I do anything else is pull the drain bolt so I guess let's just drain the crankcase and see what comes out okay let's see what happens uh that's not a oil pan, it's a water pan, it looks like coolant too, it's not water, it's studs, oh look, there's a little bit of oil mixing in now, that's not really oil, that's slushy. shake and a lot of yuck, okay this one is bad, all you did but you been at this for a while it still doesn't look like oil it's oil this is an old engine it doesn't need that Zer W zero stuff yeah this one It's bad, very bad, let's let it slide and move on, we're still wearing it down, but I want to turn it around and see what it feels like.

I'm pretty sure it turns over just because they were able to take out all the bolts on the torque converter, yeah it turns over great. I bet you it still worked, probably not very well. I feel the compression, it's a

good

engine, it's fine, probably not a problem as long as you don't put coolant in it. Next, we will remove the spark plugs well. These spark plugs actually look pretty

good

, except for the fact that they are auto lights. I don't see anything broken, broken, bent, no signs of moisture, no buildup, they don't even look that old.

Then only the automatic lights come on. Let's start at the top of the engine. We'll start with the fuel rail. Sorry guys, I didn't mean to kick you guys next. We will pull the upper plenum. Now this upper plenum. This aluminum plenum was. pretty much only on the three series 3 and it was a common upgrade for the series 2 that had the plastic melting, yes it's dirty. Next, we're going to work on some of these supports, in fact, we're going to take out this heat shield. By the way, let's see if we can free these spark plug wires, we'll save that for later, since we're in the area, we'll get this bracket and I guess I'll start unbolting the front exhaust manifold, now that we're at it.

I have a diff tube to deal with. He seems very unhappy. I want to do this now. It's very early in the disassembly. I don't know. I don't know if it's a good idea. I'm going to do it. It can't be that bad, it's empty, we knew it, well, turn, can we, can we see. I like the 3800 very well. I admit I cheated a little. I sprayed some penetrator on the bolts earlier, probably a couple of days ago, in fact, when this engine first showed up. I went in because I know how they go and it looks like my efforts were not in vain, well there's the front exhaust manifold, that's not what I wanted to happen while we're here, we'll take this cross pipe off, man it's easy and we could also take this one off rear manifold, now I can go to town with a 13mm socket.

Then we'll remove the EGR valve, a couple more briquettes, now some more blue brackets, ah, I broke it, eh, well that's not good, yeah, that's pretty ugly now. It's lower manifold time right now, the intake is ready to go and this will be the big reveal. I think ooh ooh, that's bad, how about the intake gaskets? I think this is probably the worst part about one of these engines. intake gaskets yeah yeah that's a gross 126k and they look like this and this side is better not much better or wait it's supposed to be like that no we have to try it for sure oh wow I think we have one problem here, it's like sawdust it's not sawdust it's like sawdust, although I'm not over it yet, but if you look at the rest of this, there's a little bit of shake here, it's clear that it got some moisture in here, probably because what caused this problem, intake gaskets, maybe there are more. maybe there's more to this this may be a bit of an exaggeration that was terrible I don't always have good ideas I'm going to shut my face now I think that's good enough, right?

I could have passed it without trying it, just, there we are. uh melted and then we have this one that's not good either so yeah I think this thing needed some inlet gaskets and here's the orange juice that came out of the inlet oh why did I do that? That's not good, we will get this support. out of the way pretty quickly, now it's time to remove the valve cover, well, we're not surprised, right? Well, it's pretty ugly now I don't see anything bent, broken or out of place, so that part looks fine, but that's how it was.

I definitely mixed coolant and oil everywhere for a long time, let's see what's behind door number two. It's wrong again. Yeah, I don't really expect to sell anything from this engine. Now let's take out the Rockers. Nothing is folded. One thing I noticed while pushing them. taking out the rods is that the ball ends have a brushed finish which is not good, it's supposed to have a mirror finish and I bet that's because it had coolant mixed with the oil and it was running that way and it wears the rods out. rocker arms and the pushrods now it's time to loosen the head bolts.

They don't really crack, sorry, I hope this doesn't make a big mess, hopefully it comes off, let's go blue, did I miss some bolts or something? to break the seal ooh, those look suspiciously clean I just want Ah, okay, now we have to do our test. I don't suspect we have anything broken here, but for the sake of consistency, wow, that gets easy, okay, let's take a look here, the cylinder walls don't look horrible, a little glazed. The pistons are pretty clean, like they've been ingesting coolant, they're not super clean so maybe they're not, but they look cleaner than normal and it's clear this engine sat. a place for a while, let's see that butt um uh, these are covered.

Pretty good head gasket. I mean, it looks ugly, yes, it looks bad, but it's not bad, if that makes any sense. The cylinder head doesn't look too bad. I don't think these heads have any value, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see any cracks or anything. I don't know where they like to break, if at all. Oo, we have some kind of science experiment going on. There we will now release the rockers on this side. Similar story on this side, but we have a nice looking pushrod and there's the rocker arm that went in. I didn't keep the pushrods straight, now it's time to break out the other head bolts. loose now we will try to break the seal here MH has to do our test everything looks good so looking at the cylinders they look pretty good actually I shouldn't have said anything that doesn't look so good keep in mind this is a relatively high mileage Engine low.

I don't see any problems here and in fact it looks like the cylinder head bolts go to the cooling system, they are drilled all the way through and look at the little holes in the cylinder head for the coolant to go through. Let's see if we can remove this head gasket, yes, they are supposed to be a lot bigger than that, so you know no, I'm not going to say it and I don't really see any problem with this head either now, obviously I can. I don't know because of the head gasket material left in the head, there could still be damage behind here, that would require some cleaning, possibly resurfacing to find cracks, if they crack in that spot, now we can pull the lifters . well I didn't expect to find any major problems here, it's clear coolant passed through this, all the rollers feel pretty good, I didn't see any damage to the lifter, but these engines never had AFM or DOD or any nonsense, just normal . roller lifters Everything feels pretty decent.

I'm just going to rotate this a little bit to drain some of what's in the engine, that's what you want to see. Oh, it gets dark. Alright. I'm just more worried about things hitting the floor, it's not like I don't have any pigment here to clean it up next, let's work on this water pump yeah, deliver that Dex Cool butter oo that's hot or that's really hot okay, this should come off pretty easily oo look at that rust this is already done i could never reuse this and for those wondering if its a pin not a broken bolt there are two and this looks really bad here now the bolt on the crankshaft pulley, well that was simple, now I don't know how much force this is going to exert. take, but I'm a little worried it won't fit there, so now I have to find a different adapter for this.

Now I have my doubts if this is going to work, this is going to work, everything will be fine, so what do I do? I think this is going to work. I have a small piece inserted in there that I think is for this task, but nothing is guaranteed. You know, oh, there's a big hit happening and there's the piece that I put there. I think that's what it's for if not. i used it wrong and it worked fine now this piece comes off now let's just take out some bolts see what happens some bolts from the bottom this will come out ok or do i need to pull the tray out of these F this First, I don't know if I've ever had one of these so far down so I don't remember.

I think the oil pump is back here, so we're going to turn it over and pull the pan next, we're just going to give it a little bit. Thanks, that's what you would expect, well the pan is exactly as you imagine, full of coolant and oil mixture, but I don't see any signs of shine or forbidden metal, it's just very ugly, back to this front cover, well, This is coming. Right off the bat, what does this do? That's what I expected. Will this just come out? There seems to be quite a bit of RTV here and the cover is peeling off well.

The condition of this cover leads me to believe this has been removed. before this is a disaster here I have all the colors and look at that professional RTV work now we are going to take apart the oil pump I don't suspect we are going to find any problems and I don't see any holes there is definitely somewhere in the housing, but when you get to the gears, they actually look pretty good, but you know we expected it to, there's a little bit of wear on this side which is the side that faces the aluminum casing and then on the back there are some marks I wouldn't call bad far from it and the synchronization system doesn't look that bad either.

I don't really see anything jumping towards my truck. It looks nice and clear. The rotating assembly doesn't look too bad, but there are a lot of them. uh oil and coolant mixture here while we're here, I'm going to remove the oil pickup right now, let's turn the short block over and see how it feels. I don't really feel any problem here, next we're going to release the chain tensioner. Look at that simple piece. Has some wear. Actually quite a bit of wear and tear. That's a lot for 126,000 thousand. Now let's see if we can get this cam gear out.

Good timing game. Let's see if we can get the camshaft out by removing the cam gear. I didn't know how it got separated. The cam looks pretty good. The stumps look good. There's a lot of oil and coolant mixing all over this thing, but I think it survived. and from what I can see of the cam bearings they all look pretty decent, let's see if we can pull this balance shaft, maybe it looks like this could be pressed in here, it has roller bearings at least in the front, yeah , that's it, that's it. that stays put now it's time to take out the connecting rods and the pistons we'll start at the front let's see how hard it is to take them out I bet they're not too hard look at the next two and the last two M tapioca pudding this is going to stay there now It is time to remove the main covers.

The interesting thing is that there is a bolt here here but the back cover does not have spade bolts. These are tight tolerances and are very tight. We have it. Let's start with these. the connecting rod bearings are nice, they are very nice almost anywhere I would put them on another engine, okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but they look very good, the connecting rods look good, but the pistons, at least on this bench, have quite a bit of wear on the skirts. on the thrust side, I didn't see any other damage to the pistons, this one isn't that bad, this bench wasn't terrible, you'll see it again right there, sorry, there's this, this sticky sludge is everywhere.

The pistons look goodfor the most part. I think they are usable, but no, I don't know why you would do it. They are not very expensive. New, but they all look the same in how clean they are, so I don't think it was you. We know about a crack in a cylinder per se, if that were the case we would have a really clean piston compared to the rest, but the main bearings don't look very good too, but when you get to the rear main bearing shell, this one here has a bit of damage, a bit of gouge there and the crankshaft doesn't look terrible, it's definitely rotatable or at least you probably could.

Polish this one, but there is one point of concern, well that's not very good either, but that's what I mean, there must have been coolant in here and it actually caused some corrosion on the journal, which is probably where we are. I saw the damage to the bearings. I think they told me this car was set up for about four years before they decided to put an engine in it. The cylinder walls are not horrible. I think they would clean up pretty well, but there is some pretty good corrosion due to a little moisture. Sitting on top of compression ring number one isn't awesome, yeah, I don't see anyone else jumping towards me and that doesn't mean there's something I've missed because this thing is pretty dirty and it's pretty impossible to check all the surfaces.

All the heads seize up without much aggressive cleaning of the intake gaskets on any of the 60 or 90° GMV 6s, it's a pretty common fault. Deck cooling becomes acidic over time and many people don't change their coolant regularly and when they start to run out of coolant some people add tap water which is a terrible idea. Distilled water is cheap, it's just not as convenient. If you combine that with a not-so-wonderful intake manifold and intake gasket design, this is what happens, however, if you notice. If you get there early, it's no big deal, intake gaskets, it's not a lot of money on parts or labor and then you're back on the road for a long period of time, but if you let it go, it lets the coolant and oil mix for any period of time. time becomes very expensive or are you replacing the engine now this engine I bet it's still running I bet it's completely rebuildable there may be some damage that I overlooked and can't see because of the gasket material left on the surface of the cylinder head or the face of the block, however, if all that proves that the parts are cheap, it's just a ton of work for someone to pay a shop to dismantle this engine, clean everything, send the heads to the machine shop, remove the tray, it's not even worth the responsibility. while you can buy a working 3800 for about $500 with a good warranty, put some new intake gaskets on it, put it in the car, ship it off and it's back on the road, it's a lot less time, it's a lot less money and it's much less responsibility and that's probably why it's hard for me to find a 3800 core because they don't have any core value, the motors when they are good are cheap so the core value is practically junk so for me I can find one in a scrapyard , it just wasn't going to happen, which is why we all owe a huge thank you to Premier Automotive for finally providing a 3800 for this channel.

I know it wasn't a super exciting takedown. Without malice in the combustion palace, nothing exploded. but if you want to buy any parts of this engine or anything else that I have torn down, I'm just not going to leave our email in the video description, you can also go to import apart.com. I have uploaded it. our even cars almost every week. I really hope you enjoyed this

teardown

as always. I love all the comments, all the feedback and even the criticism. I love everything and will see you in the next one.