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Just completed my top swap..first test drive left mewith concers...

Supercharged is very strong and I've heard and seen people making good amounts of power with them. NA is a little more susceptible to failing under the increased load. Rods are thinner and pistons don't hold up Well When you make mistakes....like me.
 


rods are thinner on series III engines, I have series II so Im good there hopefully..
Im glad I live near overkill, he can tune this in for me.
 
I have yet to blow up any motor except for a L26 which was making 550+whp. Blowing up any motor with a M90 takes a special skill.
 
only issues, other than people using ****ty abused parts to swap, is with l26's. if you have a l36 and plan on top swaping, you should be fine.
 


Abused? I cant stress enough how durable 3800s are when it comes to power handling... I havent given my cars any slack at power levels that double and triple your best m90 "builds".... if you are breaking stuff (L36/L26/L67/L32) from "too much power" at 300whp you are insane.
 
I'll always consider the L32. It's what I'd like to end up with, but I enjoy the idea of the top swapped 3.8 as long as I'm boosted via the M90. Turbo....yeah L32 all the way.
 


jlgp2007nc said:
I've got about a thousand miles out of it already and last night was the first time I really opened it up. I haven't driven the car yet but When I put in a new plug it idled just fine. We'll see what happens When I put it on the road this afternoon.

I'm not surprised about the failure I did hit 11psi and leaned out to 12.1:1. I already know the NA bottom ends aren't prepared for what the top swap is throwing out.

Be afraid lol....top swapping high mile stock NA bottom ends will always inevitably lead to engine failure. All you can do is do a good job at install, keep everything clean, torque everything down properly and use good parts.

I'm not out of the game just yet!
Click to expand...

You do know that SC bottom ends do the same thing, right? Any high mile bottom end or bottom end exposed to coolant is at risk of premature failure.
 
I was driving up the mountain I live on... Not getting on it, nothing excessive... I braked to go around a hairpin, went around it, proceeded to give it gas and POW!!!! Good bye motor #2. My first motor, the original, threw #1 rod (as did motor #2) but #1 did not throw it through the block. It just dropped the remaining part of the arm and it locked up on the crank. Do I swear by L36 rods..... NO To each their own, I'll take my chances on the L26 PM rods... If I blow the L26, I'll go LS... LOL
 


Well mine blew today. Freaking part throttle and 8psi too. Was running fantastic...ugh. No boom, but knocking and spitting out blue and black smoke.
 
You were running 11.7 AFR on 11psi with what for supporting mods???

I had a 3.4, XP, Header car that I had locking at 10.1 afr WOT on 91 E10/E15. On the rich side, yes, but my engine was happy, and it took a good amount of abuse the 2 years I had it topswapped. As a matter of fact, its back to N/A and still running to this day.
 
Was supposed to be 11. Was still maf tuning to drop the numbers and thought I'd get a nice little pull out of it and wham. Wasn't even beating on it that's what sucks.
 
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