3400 swap into RWD truck application

[Greg55_99]

ALl 200R4s I have seen have the BOP bolt pattern, not the small corporate pattern.

Yep, you're right. I just checked. My bad..

Greg

ALl 200R4s I have seen have the BOP bolt pattern, not the small corporate pattern.

[Greg55_99]

Just to throw some fuel on the fire:

I believe the 82-93 Cadillac Fleetwood used the RWD 200-4R behind the 4.1-4.5L V8. It also has the same bellhousing pattern of the 3400 and, I think, has the starter on the same side.

Greg

ok im wrong there, the 3800 and 3.4l rwd are both have the starter on the passenger side. the difference in the bellhousing is just with the starter pocket itself. aside from that, the bellhousing is the same and it would bolt up to a 3400.

I consider that to be quite the difference, since it can not be just bolted to the FWD version without modification to dlearnace the FWD starter location.

[sharkey]

ok im wrong there, the 3800 and 3.4l rwd are both have the starter on the passenger side. the difference in the bellhousing is just with the starter pocket itself. aside from that, the bellhousing is the same and it would bolt up to a 3400.

Sharkey, are you saying that the (F-Body) 3800 has a driver side mounted starter then? I was under the impression they had a passenger side starter, pretty sure I've seen pictures that indicated this also.

[keitholivier]

Well, I'm floored. Naive I guess.

Now a question to those of you who know the "iron" 3.4L V6 and the 4L60E tranny: Considering that the starter mounts "below" the centerline of the crankshaft, will having the starter in this position cause interference with the 4L60E bell housing ?

Does anyone know the outer diameter of the flexplate on the 3.4 Iron motor ? If all else fails, I could make up a 3/4" thick adapter plate that accepts a flange mount starter, which would of course require a custom machined flex plate (or at least spacers and longer bolts for the torque converter).

Now that I understand the fundamental difference between the 3.4 Iron and 3400 (aluminum head) motors I am able also to grasp some of the tuning issues. Since I have already forked over the cash for the Camaro ECU, what I will do in the interim is use this ECU to get the motor running and as a transmission controller. When I get far enough into it, I could build up a microsquirt or evaluate one of the FWD ECUs for the primary engine controller. The Tranny controller would have to see enough signals to believe the motor was running and know how to shift and the engine controller would have to believe one was running a manual transmission. One way or another I would have to disable the injector drivers for the tranny controller, since these sink a fair amount of current and I believe they can detect an open or short circuited injector.

Anyway, the workload is certainly increasing. I would like to stay with the 4L60E tranny. It was in production until relatively recently and I hate being tied to older hard to find bits. (like the >$2k 97 Venture transmission and my Toyota "special" dually rear axle)....

Thanks for the heads up everyone.
Keith

[sharkey]

the 3400 block and camaro 3.4l block are very different beasts. the 3400 block doesnt have enough meat on to drill and bolt the starter to the rwd starter location. the 3400 is not the same engine as a 3.4l f-body. the 3.4l was a gen 1, cast iron head motor that made 160hp. the 3400 is aluminum head gen 3 motor that was rated at 185hp. they are very different beasts.

and i will argue that the 2.2l 4l60e is no different than the 3.4/3800 4l60e. i have worked on both, even had 2 of them side x side at one point, they are no different from each other. they are both the small gm bellhousing and use a 245mm torque converter. we arent talking standard transmissions here, wich indeed are very different between an f-body and an s10.

[keitholivier]

Why should the VE tables for the 3400 in the RWD application be so vastly different to the same engine in a FWD application ? GM was producing these engines side by side so this is hard to believe.

And in the case of the Camaro they have to fit the starter somewhere too. Are you suggesting that the FWD motor is missing some machined pads to allow a starter to be fitted for the RWD application ? You're sure that after they started fitting the motor to the rwd applications the blocks didn't subsequently get updated for the FWD applications ?

Damn.. sounds like I have some more checking to do.

You did not buy that bypass module as an add on for a remote starter then as what was being suggested, they send a resistor signal, and tie into teh electrical system pre "theft module", I say "BCM" since some people refer to modules such as this as a "BCM", also newer cars integrate the "theft module" and BCM.

As Sharky has said and I previous to that, the RWD and FWD use opposite sides for the starter, which causes issues for just bolting these items together. I know, I'm going through that right now, just with a 3500.

The 2.2 S-10 tranny is NOT the same as the F-body tranny. The bellhousing to trans pattern is quite different. Unfortunatly the S-10 trans seems to be pricey, hence why I am looking into using a Mustang tranny on that bellhousing, since the pattern is the same, input shaft is a bit different, and I can pick one up for half the price, maybe even cheaper.

I was hoping that the bellhousing would have enough material to dril and tap for the older tranny, as that would make things MUCH easier, but would actually require welding new material to the bellhousing since the older tranny pattern is much wider than the newer pattern.

The problem with trying to use the 3.4 PCM on the 3400 is teh VE tables will be WAY off and that's where the issues begin. Using the VE tables of the genII 3.1 which are much closer to that of the 3400, are not entirely close enough. Some people also experiance return to idle stalling, whihc is a "stall saver" and "MPH vs Idle constant" adjustment that can not be adjusted in the 3.4 F-body PCM, due to lack of support for it.

The SFI function is just not worth the headache. If you really want SFI, you'd probably spend less overall on a FAST or similar aftermarket system and MUCH less time getting it to run right, hence why I suggest using a FWD genII 3.1 ('7730) ECM as a base and is quite supported for tuning purposes.

[sharkey]

the 3400 uses whats reffered to as the "small gm boltpattern". this is used on all the v6's and many 4 cyl motors, fwd and rwd. one issue you will run into is the starter, the fwd v6 is on the 2.4.6 bank, and the rwd v6 is on the 1.3.5 bank. if you use a 2.2l rwd the starter is on the 2.4.6 side, so this would fix your starter issues. the tranny itself is the same as any f-body. also, the slightly higher stall converter that would be with the 2.2l tranny may be a bit more favorable for the heavy vehicle its going into.

the 95 camaro ecu will work out best for you. no its not tunable, however it will run the 3400 just fine.

[keitholivier]

Mr Raven:

The 95 Camaro does not have a BCU. It has a theft deterent module, which is what outputs the 30 / 50 hz square wave signal. The bypass module I purchased is a 3 wire unit (ground, power and the 30 / 50hz Output) It gets wired such that it is live during cranking or it seems there would be no problem with it being live anytime the ignition is on.

My impression regarding the tranny is that the bellhousing pattern IS the FWD pattern, since the 3400 motor was a later year "retrofit" in the RWD Camaro. The V8 tranny is of course NOT the same and they are also a lot more readily available and less expensive used / rebuilt. No matter, since quite a few (reportedly 65%) of the Camaros were sold with the V6.

My whole reasoning behind selecting this vehicle / year is that provided I find the parts that came off a Camaro with the 3.4L engine, the tuning should work just fine with the later motor which I have. I'm not in a HP contest, in a comparison between the Toyota 22RE and the 3400V6 the Toyota is going to flunk on Torque, power and noise. Fuel economy for my situation (6000lb motorhome) will most likely be a match as long as I don't try to set any coast to coast records......

I just recently rebuilt the 22RE and set off on a 2 week vacation to Colorado a few days later. Now during the 2 weeks I did just under 3000 miles, of which about 2200 was just driving there and back. At an average speed of 50mph, you can work out how many hours (DAYS !) that was. And unless the prevailing wind was directly behing me, the best that the 22RE could do was hold 3rd gear and kicking down to second anytime there was a hill in sight. At least on the way back (east) I was able to hold OD for about 300 miles...

Regards
Keith

if you use the tranny (4l60e), ecm and wiring harness from an f-body everything will work just fine. you will need a 94-95 wiring harness and pcm, mainly because 93 and older used a 700r4 (non electronic) transmission. the tranny should be easy to find as gm used the small bellhousing 4l60e up to 2002 in the 2.2l s10 and 3.4/3800 f-body.

The 2.2 S-10 tranny would be better to mate to the 3400, since it uses the FWD belhousing pattern, and starter location. I'm tempted to use this same tranny in my Jimmy, or at least the bellhousing, since I can get one for $65, and then mate a newer tranny, possibly from a Mustang to this bellhouing, clutch might be a bit of a mix and match.

as for the passlock bypass, you can get a bypass module from a shop that installs alarms and remote starts. bypassing the passlock is required for a remote start to work correctly.

This will only work if the Passlok module/BCM is also installed in the vehcile, and would be MUCH more work to use than building a square wave circuit. Also for thos ebypass modules to work, you have to know the code or at least have a working, running system to program the module for that resistor code. The bypass module can also be made from a resistor and depending on the level of security you want to retain a couple relays.

There are pages around that have info on how to build the square wave circuit for an application such as this.

if you wanted to, you could run a non electronic 700r4. its the predicessor to the 4l60e, basicly a 4l60e is just a full electronic version of the 700r4. they have been used from 84-93 in f-bodies and s series trucks. one shouldnt be hard to find. to run the truck with this, you could grab an f-body harness and ecm, and it should run the 3400 just fine.

A better start would be a FWD 3.1 or 2.8 ECM, since it will run the ignition just fine, but some tuning is required to match the engine closer, which would be needed with any ECM swap such as this anyway.

The 3.4 F-body ECM has little to no support for tuning, there are guys tryng to hack it, but most of the time a swap to an already hacked ECM or aftermarket.

MS II has support for ignition and will run the GM DIS ignition, so that's probably the best route.

[sharkey]

if you use the tranny (4l60e), ecm and wiring harness from an f-body everything will work just fine. you will need a 94-95 wiring harness and pcm, mainly because 93 and older used a 700r4 (non electronic) transmission. the tranny should be easy to find as gm used the small bellhousing 4l60e up to 2002 in the 2.2l s10 and 3.4/3800 f-body.

as for the passlock bypass, you can get a bypass module from a shop that installs alarms and remote starts. bypassing the passlock is required for a remote start to work correctly.

if you wanted to, you could run a non electronic 700r4. its the predicessor to the 4l60e, basicly a 4l60e is just a full electronic version of the 700r4. they have been used from 84-93 in f-bodies and s series trucks. one shouldnt be hard to find. to run the truck with this, you could grab an f-body harness and ecm, and it should run the 3400 just fine.

[keitholivier]

Well, I have dug a little deeper. It looks like a tranny out of a mid 90's Camaro would bolt right up (the 3.4 was an OE motor at that time). It is an electrically controlled version (4L60E) so I would also need the ECU from the Camaro or Firebird.

The 4th gen Camaro (I am not certain up to what year) used the PasskeyII theft deterrent system with 1 of 15 resistance values being used to check if the correct key was being used to start the vehicle. If the correct key was used, the BCM would send a 50% duty cycle 30hz pulsed 12VDC signal to the ECU. I'm pretty sure one could replicate this signal to the ECU with a circuit based on the 555 timer chip. That should permanently disable the Passkey system. Later this system changed to an ID being sent via serial comms, this is typically beyond the scope of us wrenchers to circumvent.

I've checked availability on the mid 90 Camaro trannies and it is a LOT better than the 2.8 S10 box (which had no electronics). $300 will get a box with reasonable miles on ebay and there are quite a few out there.

The same version ECU natively supports the injection scheme used on the 3400 motor I have, so that is also one problem less. ECU's run between $30-80 on ebay and about $90-150 remanufactured (Rock Auto).

Are there additional problems besides what I have mentioned that I will face with this version ECU ? Comments, suggestions ? It seems like getting something that will natively support the RWD and readily available tranny is a better idea than trying to find a rare non electric transmission.

regards
Keith