I have a 1984 buick Skyhawk t-type 1.8l ohc automatic. From what i've read on here the auto trans can't handle more than 200hp and the engine may be able to hold up to 350hp before various thing can go wrong. I'm thinking about putting a dohc engine in with a auto transmission that can hold at least 400hp. I want to keep the auto shifter in the car so I was thinking the new transmission would have to be 3 gears again but i'm not sure. How hard would it be to do something like this and how much would it cost me? Also what 4 cylinder dohc engine and auto transmission do u guys recommend for the intall on this car? I don't want to convert to manual tranny.

Thanks,

i forgot to mention i want to turbocharge whatever engine i drop in.

How much fab work do you want to do? Ecotec has lots of aftermarket, are easy to find, and bullet proof when done correctly. Not to mention you'd likely have the first one with one.


1994 Saturn SL2 Home Coming Edition: backup car
2002 Chevy Cavalier LS Sport Coupe: In a Junk Yard
1995 Mazda Miata R-package Class=STR
Sponsored by: Kronos Performance

WPI Class of '12 Mechanical Engineering
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I'm willing to throw in at least $10,000 into the car. I work on a ship and don't have time to do anything myself. I'm planning to take it to a auto shop of some sort. That's why I was wondering how much it would cost to do all of what I want to do to it. It was my first car and I want to bring it back to life. It was sitting in the desert for the past 10 years on a family friends property. I just recently towed it to a storage facility.

Wow she's needs some TLC after sitting for so long.At least your motivated to bring it back,and that's awesome!Just keep in mind body parts are kinda hard to find for yours unless some here have them.I have yet to see any skys in the junkyards lately.Cool stuff,and if I find anything I will post it up in my post local u pull it finds.If there is something specific let me know as I can keep it in mind.

Thanks. Yeah, the interior is petrified. when I opened up the hood 2 rabbits jumped out. it looks like there were generations of rabbits living in the engine bay cuz there is lots of rabbit @!#$ covering the entire engine and they were even chewing the wires. I think it's just better to go to another engine. Right now i'm trying to find a thread with someone swapping to a ecotec engine from a 1st gen. I want to get this car running first then I can nickel and dime the body and interior later. Incase I don't find it a link to such a thread would be handy.


on second thought a bumper would be nice


and a dashboard


i'll probably figure out what to do with the seats later. the passenger seat started to rip when i leaned into the car

I cannot find any engine swaps to ecotec or any other engine for 1 gen j cars. Any links would be appreciated. I hate the fact I cannot search only within the 1st gen section.

Mark-

Thats funny. You engine looks a lot like mine did when I had to kick out the possums that were living under the hood. They chewed the crap outta my wiring harness.

Cool car to start with...

So i guess I don't have the only car that got sh1tted on. I was starting to feel lonely. Do U know of any threads of people with 1st gen cars swapping to an ecotec or any other kind of motor? I've been searching since last night. I see all kinds of threads of people asking about doing it but no threads of someone who has done 1. I've also seen threads of people doing 2nd or 3rd gen but I want to see a thread of a 1st gen engine swap. Since I'm already replying I also forgot to state that I want to drag race my skyhawk when I fix it up.

Well YOU are not out of LUCK! Sharkey a former regular member had done a swap to a 1st gen I want to say with a 3400 eng deal.I would have to scroll back to around 2007 or later in the first gen forum to find the stuff.Unless you do it 1st!!! Just look for sharkey's name as the poster he did it all ecm,trans,motor etc.I might say even the 3.1 should fit but,mods or let's say upgrading certain components were necessary.Tired long day and just can't remember everything,but his stuff was on spot,and he DOE"S have a cardomain page can't remember if his was a 86 or 87 cavalier.It was still up last time I checked wks back.He bought a ss cobalt as a daily and gave up on his 1st gen due to daily drive,and other stuff.That interior probably needs to be completely removed at least seats,carpet, and replace the carpet(easy) and recover the seats(uphol shop) it has potential.

Any 60* V6 should go right in. There are guys who have done 3800 swaps into 2nd gens (which have the same engine mount layout as 1st gens). Basically anything that has gone into a 2nd gen will go into your car with the same amount of work.

There has been 1 guy that has done an Ecotec into a 2nd gen, I don't know if it was ever finished. He ran into wiring issues or something.

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http://www.j-body.org/forums/read.php?f=28&i=8418&t=8418 This is 1 post of many made by sharkey with his 2.8 in a 87 coupe he made into a Z 24. See if this is the route you want to go.As stated the V6 eng will fit,but you will have to get the ecm stuff,and not sure on the dash wiring needing to be changed or not.

Thanks for the replies. I wonder why Sharkey didn't just get a ecu from the car he got the engine from? If I decide to go through with this I'm thinking of buying a running car as the donor. But the more research i'm doing on this the more i'm thinking of just sticking with the 1.8 either in a crate or overhauling that 1. I still have to worry about the chewed up wiring, it may be hard to find replacement wires.

There are a few guys on V6Z24.com parting out 2nd gens right now. The wiring harness in those is the one you need for any V6 (2.8, 3.1, 3x00, etc) swap. For the most part, GM used the same sending units for years, so you may not need to change any gauges, you may just need to splice into the factory 1st gen harness.
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checking it out right now, thanks

I happened to be thinking when I was at work today. I remembered you saying you planned on spending 10k on your ride.

If you are planning on getting most or all of the work done by a shop. I would imagine you could eat up a good bit of that 10k on just an original rebuild and darn good body respray. I'm hoping others might jump in and help me out here. I remember reading body shops can charge around 6k for professional paint job. Then the work under hood and interior could possibly be as much more. I've heard rebuilding a muscle car can run up to 40k for a top job.
Lord knows I can't afford anything like 10k ...much less 40k, so I just do the best I can myself :-)

Anyways, it might be a good idea to get some estimates for your repairs from local shops to find out what you can do.

Orlen Brown wrote:I happened to be thinking when I was at work today. I remembered you saying you planned on spending 10k on your ride.

If you are planning on getting most or all of the work done by a shop. I would imagine you could eat up a good bit of that 10k on just an original rebuild and darn good body respray. I'm hoping others might jump in and help me out here. I remember reading body shops can charge around 6k for professional paint job. Then the work under hood and interior could possibly be as much more. I've heard rebuilding a muscle car can run up to 40k for a top job.
Lord knows I can't afford anything like 10k ...much less 40k, so I just do the best I can myself :-)

Anyways, it might be a good idea to get some estimates for your repairs from local shops to find out what you can do.

over the past few days I've been doing a lot of research and am thinking the same thing as far as the amount of money it would take to do a swap. as of right now I'm thinking I just need to get it running then nickel and dime it later. I'm not to worried about the exterior or interior at this time. Right now the car is sitting in storage and I just need to get it out of there because we are spending $70 a month for it. My dad likes the 1.8L engine and wants to see how much we can get out of it. I told him that a lot of people strongly suggest the 2.0 but he seems to think we can pull over 300 whp with the 1.8. He said when we have the auto transmission in the shop he wants to beef up the internals and put a stall converter on it so it can handle more torque. I'm kinda curious now as I haven't seen anybody on here beef up a 1.8 with an auto trans. My dad used to drag race back in the day so I hope some of those old tricks he knows still apply today for a vehicle that's hard to get parts for.

Speaking of parts I've found a lot of places online that sell parts for our cars. If you guys are interested I can post the links in my next message. I've literally spent about 45 hours surfing the web for parts for this car.

Paul94Z28 is knowledgeable and helpful about the OHC's , he's done a lot to his Pontiac 2000 Sunbird.

He lists his mods as :

Buick Intercooler
7749 ECM
Modified Dodge Neon K&N Cold Air Kit
2.5 Downpipe back exhaust with Magnaflow muffler.

...and says his future for the car is:

"Continue the restification and make it into a a land-based cruise missle wrapped in a mid 80s j-car body"

Sounds like you 2 can share some good information along your journeys

Keep the post a commin', love to see the progress as you go!! I'm sure to learn a lot from you along the way!!

im going to pm him. im curious about the ecm and if the inter-cooler came off of a gnx or equivalent.

Wow - You guys are really inflating my ego here... Don't put me on a pedestal, I have had this car for a while and slowly been learning from it every year... I have tried a few things with my car, some worked and some did not... The intercooler I tried was a stock unit off of a Regal GN. I had the necks cut off and made to mate up with the stock charge piping. I found I could handle more boost psi, but the lag involved took the car out of being streetable. I put back to a stock-ish charge pipe until I figure out if I want to go to a bigger snail.

The ECM swap is absoluetly worth it, just to be able to use datamaster for logging. The cold air kit and the cat-back make the car sound like an STI under boost. I have yet to get it to the track to get an actual metric there. It feels faster when properly warmed up.

Mark said his Dad used to drag back in the day, so I'm guessing he prolly knows some sweet tricks.

Sounds like Mark and Paul could be having some fun next year after the weather breaks!! You guys are gonna be the ones to be tuned in to!! :-)

Paul94Z28 wrote:Wow - You guys are really inflating my ego here... Don't put me on a pedestal, I have had this car for a while and slowly been learning from it every year... I have tried a few things with my car, some worked and some did not... The intercooler I tried was a stock unit off of a Regal GN. I had the necks cut off and made to mate up with the stock charge piping. I found I could handle more boost psi, but the lag involved took the car out of being streetable. I put back to a stock-ish charge pipe until I figure out if I want to go to a bigger snail.

The ECM swap is absoluetly worth it, just to be able to use datamaster for logging. The cold air kit and the cat-back make the car sound like an STI under boost. I have yet to get it to the track to get an actual metric there. It feels faster when properly warmed up.

I didn't ever pm you (paul) but I followed you through the net. You use the same name on at least most other forums u visit. I learned a lot from all the reading. U were the guy that did the auto trunk open thing right? How did it go? It's hard to remember the who, what, when, wheres, with all the online researching I've been doing but I believe that was you.

My dad has decided to have the car put in the shop this month and he has a mental list of what he wants done to it. He has mentioned a 2700 give or take stall on the torque converter (recommended this cuz of this forum), complete port and polish, blue print and balance, better oil & fuel pumps, put better internals in the tranny, better ignition system. I'm pushing the aftermarket ecm on him because I don't see how a chip could keep up with the car after each mod and the fact I haven't found any company that makes them. He isn't too savy on computers but i think he realizes how important this forum site is. He asked me to ask everyone here what they think would be good mods for the 1.8. As of now he plans on driving the Skyhawk from San Diego to Pennsylvania and doesn't want to go all out yet as far as gas guzzling mods but maybe stuff to do while the transmission and engine are being worked on. After he does that road trip he's going to fix the Skyhawk up more. I'm guessing the mods should be similar to fixing up the 2.0 (correct me if I'm Wrong) but I'm not to savy about engine work, I always wanted to play when my dad tried teaching me and now I regret it=) Thanks again for all the input!

Mark-
Yes, I am Paul94Z28 on most forums I visit. Yes, I did the trunk pop. Gonna wire it into my keyless fob someday.

I have been flat out told to discard my 1.8 in favor of the 2.0. There were some growing pains with the 1.8 setup that got addressed with the 2.0. I think Alan has a write-up on here somewhere. There are several guys that have gone further than I as far as the mods are concerned (Ned, Tony, and Shannen - feel free to surface). There are things that can be done to improve what you have. I chose to upgrade my ecm, injectors, and oil pan setup to the 2.0 setup. The ecm gives me the flexibility to burn chips as my needs change. I do want a larger turbo later on but want to drive it right up until then.

I would love to see us come up with a transmission solution that would let us get another couple of forward gears. Even with a 4 speed auto, you could get some great MPG outta these cars. I would love a 6-speed like my Camaro has, but I don't want to change the close gear ratios I currently have - I just want more of them