Keep in mind, IF you are buying this as a daily driver, you are buying a '95 era car (I'm guessing your current Monte is of similar age). Regardless of what you do to the drivetrain, the suspension probably needs addressed, the body may be rough with rust underneath in the nooks and crannies you don't see. As a daily driver, you need to make sure you look it over good and hard before committing.

If this is for a "toy" car, depending what you want to do with it as a toy, depends if it's worth it. If you have ALL the donor pieces to swap the v6 drive train for a newer v8, this could be worth it (again, it would be BEST to have a complete donor car, such as I believe the drive shaft in the v6 F-bodies is a different length then the v8's, so you'll bump into those odd "gotcha" issues).

 

The thing about all of those cars is that they were traditonally not "adult owned." Often times they ended up in a 16 year olds hands who didn't know how to drive a clutch.... so that might be completely worn out, hard to say. If you're going to swap it, no worries.

I don't know that anything is wrong with a 3.4L engine... descent power for its age I suppose, 5 speed is a lot of fun to drive if you know how to do it....

But it's not a V8, and won't put a smile on your face like an LS1 will.

3.4 is a fairly economical engine. The LS1 isn't that bad for what it is either.

Plus, if you switch engines, as an added bonus, you will have a V8 monster insured as a 6 cylinder.


But I can tell you right now... pullling and engine, especially in newer cars, is a lot of work really. It would take 3-5 days of solid work if it was me doing it.

 

If you are 100% confident in your mechanical abilities to get this car up and running then go for it.

If you don't know what you are doing, you will probably be stuck with a 3.4 F-body and not happy.

 

Cowboy brought up a good point about the engine swap. I have seen how a 4th gen f-body had to be setup to pull the engine and transmission (all four wheels on home-made wooden stands to raise the car about 1-2 feet). It's a TIGHT engine compartment on those cars.
Just do your homework. As I said, getting a car like this as a daily driver requires checking out as much as you can and be sure you know what you're getting.

They can be a lot of fun, and there are TONS of aftermarket goodies from performance to everyday repair.

 

Keep in mind that when I said I think it would take 3-5 days, I've done engine swaps in 2 cars (68 Torino and 68 Fairlane) and 4 pick up trucks (50 Chevy 3100, 73 Ford F-100, 74 Ford F-100, 77 Ford F-150) The ones I've done, I'm pretty familiar with. Newer cars have a lot more wiring, they are tighter inside, and a lot of things you can go wrong doing.

Had I never done an engine swap, I could see where it would take 6-8 days even on some of these newer cars. Sometimes, just getting the engine to where you can pull it is an all day job.

Plus, what will make it even trickier, is that if you take one engine out and put the same engine back in, you know more=less where everything went and how it went there... if your'e going back with another engine, you start running into countless issues with how something is going to fit, wiring differences, wires that don't want to come apart correctly, possible crossmember differences, possibly a front suspension that wasn't built to hold that weight, maybe even need a different driveshaft....

But I don't want to be the pessimist either. You may not run into any of the issues I mention, but you will certainly find a few things that need to be tweaked to swap out the engine.

 

If you do swap, to save some time, I would suggest dropping everything down under the car, roll the new drivetrain under it and bolt it in. I've seen that done on a 4th gen.

 

thanks for the advice everybody. im still talking to the guy about it. it has a little over 156,000 miles and his wife bought it from the original owner. the only things wrong with it are the paint (its flat turqouise-ish blue and black from where they were going to have it repainted but the shop screwed them over big time) and the only dent in the body is above the back left wheel. and i was planning on just driving it til i saved up a little more money so i can buy the engine/trans from my brother in law and buying a little extra car so ill have a way to get around. and i already have a shop to do everything in.