I haven't been a part of the 3800 community anywhere near long enough to have been around when ZZP / Matt ran an 8.65 in their Grand Prix, but maybe some of you guys here were. I was trying to find out more about the car, aside from the fact that it was twin turbo and had a built 4t65e. The thing I was most interested about was the video I found of the car revving out to 8000rpm on the dyno. Obviously some really heavy valve springs are needed for that to prevent valve float. But I haven't been able to find a definitive answer on crank, rods, pistons, cam, valvetrain, etc. I also heard there was an issue, probably with the ECU, not wanting to rev over 7500rpm. But also, taking into consideration it's a turbo car, can the engine make enough power that high in rpm for it to be worth the trouble? Now obviously "worth the trouble" is subjective. Lets say worth it to an all out turbo car, but still on a budget. I know the heads are what limit air intake, but wouldn't boost pretty much overcome that issue to a certain degree?

 

Downside is that most of the detailed discussion threads are long gone. Back in the day, the two big 3800 forums were clubgp and 3800pro/tech. There was also a fairly distinctive split between ZZP and Intense supporters. Intense ran 3800pro/tech so naturally, ZZP related threads were pretty scarce. ZZP posted most frequently on clubgp (besides the MI specific forums).

Unfortunately clubgp shut down years ago and tons of good 3800 info was lost as a result (not just threads like this, but all kinds of great tech info as it eas the heyday of 3800 innovation).

Theres certainly still some scattered info left across other forums, but I couldn't find any that had the detailed build threads like clubgp used to have for you to look at. You could always reach out to ZZP directly and they might be able to give you a run down.

was being the key word. They tossed it for a big single ultimately.

It's been a really long time but AFAIK they didnt regularly run it to 8 and didn't pick up any real power doing so. IIRC they were fighting converter slip and were trying to shove more rpm and boost into it to get the power up, but additional converter slip meant that the power gains were negligible.

I don't believe they ever got a new converter to solve the slip, and really interest fizzled pretty quick anyways. Years prior when the car build started, they were fighting Intense to each ET goal trying to win aftermarket share. By the point they were running 8s, there was no competition with the 3800 as Intense had already crashed and burned. The car didnt really fit any standard drag classes well either, so it didnt really make much sense to keep pushing. The 3800 market was already sliding pretty hard at that point anyways, so it's not like there was much aftermarket share to even fight over so they went off to other platforms. No reason to keep sinking tons of time and money into it when there were other markets gaining popularity.

All that stuff was on cgp, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Probably best to ask directly.

TBH 8k isnt super crazy. People had been doing 7k and even into the low 7s with the very large cams already, and at this point there have been several people doing 7500. So it's not some crazy stretch. I'm currently at a 7250 rev limiter on my monte and its stock cleaned up rods, stock crank, and ARP rod and main bolts.

Theres a few things to keep in mind
-Hydaulic lifter setups naturally limit how crazy you can go with rpm
-Stress increases quicker with rpm, it's not a linear relationship. So going from 7000 to 8000 adds a ton more stress on the parts than 6000 to 7000 does.
-The engine as a whole wasnt really designed/ optimized to be a high rpm screamer. There are lots of core design elements that make the 3800 a poor choice for crazy rpm. Plenty of other engines out there better suited to it if you're just chasing a rpm #.

There are pcm table and ICM limitations but that's not really the big issue. If someone were wanting to do 10k rpm, a standalone computer and ignition module would solve any minor issue there.

The hard parts are the expensive bits to fix. Getting heads that flow worthwhile that high up and a bottom end that can handle the stress.

There's no reason to IMO. Plenty of people have shown you can make more than enough power for the platform with reasonable rpm limits. The engine is going to live a longer life with more boost and lower rpm than less boost and higher rpm (assuming equal power).

Sure there have been people really try to push the limits and go nuts, but to be honest, if 500-600 whp isn't enough, you're better off changing engine platforms rather than spending tens of thousands getting a 3800 to the ragged edge. A bone stock LS with boost and meth injection can do 600 whp all day. Plenty of junkyard 5.3 turbo setups have shown 800++ is achievable on a budget, and 1000 whp is getting somewhat normal for street car LS builds nowadays. You can get to far higher power levels with a LS and do so much more reliably than at the same power levels of a 3800.

 

No doubt you can force anything to work if needed, the problem is that you're fighting so many design factors needlessly by pushing a platform way outside of its design parameters. If you look at a 3800 NA dyno, power starts to fall just after 5k and torque starts dropping hard at 4k. Everything was designed to complement an engine that would never see over 6k. Youre talking about trying to stretch that more than 50% beyond where it peaked from the factory - using mostly all factory parts which isn't generally a good recipe for success.


The other thing to keep in mind in the grand scheme is that crazy RPM (relatively speaking of course) is really a NA thing. NA setups rely on displacement and RPM increases for large airflow adjustment changes. With a turbo, you dont need to do that - you can artificially increase it by just turning a **** as long as your turbo has the capacity and is in a good spot on the map.

 

Try the waybackmachine for some sites that have disappeared, some info might still be available

https://web.archive.org/web/20190114...heck=490902118

 

I was gonna suggest this also.

 

I cant seem to get it to work unfortunately.

I can get it to load the home page and some of the links, but cant seem to get it to go into the forum section at all.

 

It depends what was scanned and saved, you can try different years/month.

 

Does anyone recall if that car was still on the stock ECU, or did they go to a standalone ECU?

 

Not sure TBH. I gave up on that way back search, I can't get it to load much of anything much less get to the search function to find the threads.

One thing that could help answer your question though is this pic of it late in its life once the swapped to the big single turbo:



if you look at the very top left of the engine, you'll see the side of 3x stock coils. While not particularly interesting on their own, the red pieces below them look to be MSD coil adapters (8870s?) which are adapters that sandwich between the ICM and coils to allow you to run an external ignition controller such as the MSD DIS 4 / DIS 4 HO which is probably what ZZP did. That would've likely allowed the higher RPM and that 2 step video they did.

A few people played with them back in the day on 3800s for various reasons. Downside is like most MSD stuff, reliability is hit or miss. A few people also got pretty screwed on the HO boxes. They were advertised for 'drag racing' purposes, and denied warranty claims when the boxes burned up quick. I remember the one guy only ran it 10 minutes which they claimed was well outside of what the box was designed for, lol.

 

I was wondering how they approached 2 step/launch control. The route I'm going to take is less expensive than a 1000$+ MSD setup. The trans controller I'm using has a launch control feature built in, and for 2 step I will probably use a N2MB WOT box.

Side note, wow that is some massive turbo pipping