I know I'm practically sinning doing this but.... My best friend has a transam with the 6 cyl in it. Something is wrong with his motor and he has me stumped as well. The problem, as he describes it to me, is his car cranks up and runs fine for approximately 20-30 min. at or around that point he can start to hear some odd noises and slight shaking from his engine. Shortly thereafter his temp guage shoots up and the car overheats and turns off. He talked to a local mechanic and everyone keeps telling him that they think it could be a cracked block... If the block was cracked wouldnt he be experiencing some sort of exhaust smoke and or milky oil when checking it via the dipstick. He also told me that someone told him it might be the head or blown headgasket.... that doesnt sound right to me either in this case, with no smoke and nothing in the engine oil contaminating it, could it still be a block/head issue?
If anyone has an idea we would be gratefull.... Also if anyone knows a company that sells turnkey 6cyl transam engines that could be of help to. I did some looking around for him but I guess there isnt a huge market for 6 cyl's... lol :D who knew....
Thanks guys and keep the hate mail to a minimal lol.

Josh

Defective termostat is the first thing to cross my mind. The odd noise you hear is the motor severly over heating and the pistons scuffing the cylinder walls. Is this the OHC in-line six?

Big Dave

perhaps he means grand am

I will ask about which engine it is specifically, it is a transam though.

I asked him today and he said its a v6

Oh, no loss then. The little 3.8 Buick V-6 is pretty tough, but they do not like over heating. The good news is that there are tens of thousands of them out there (made from 1962 up until 1987). I have one out in the barn I was thinking of using to build a zero turn lawn mower with. I bought the entire car to get the 200R4 core out of it for a $100 bucks and drove it (a 1976 Camaro LT) home. A local salvage yard I know down the street a piece drops the entire motor into a pot and melts them (along with Jap motors) as the aluminum that they pour off is worth more in scrap value than the motor is.

Big Dave

I told him to head home and pull the thermostat out of the car and reinstall the cover and run it for a while and watch the temp guage and see if that fixed his problem. Certainly would be better than replacing a whole engine lol

There are five different designs (differrent displacements; with the newer motors being the better to chose from). A 4.1 liter will bolt in place of the 3.8 as wil a 3.2 for that matter. Bigger is better.

Big Dave