Interesting youtube video's...

[vlad01]

Are you referring to the engine management used on them in the video?

If so, yeah it's the same engine we have here, out of the same factory as they were all manufactured in Flint in Michigan. We just had our Aus variant of the accessories, manifold, sump fitted and also the cheaper engine management the 808 and batch injection.

I have a feeling that is what the 3300 variant used which was an ultra low budget version of the 3800, they even cheaped out on head gaskets on them where they were all graphite and no sealant beads or fire rings, just the raw sheet of graphite material die cut with the necessary shape.

All the while, the US remained with the higher tech MAF in TB and full sequential injection. You need to remember, California laws were the setting standards for emission other counties would follow suit in, so they were always the strictest, hence why EFI on mass produced US engines like this were so high tech for the time compared to elsewhere. We got the engine, just with the emissions cut down as we all know, Aus lags far behind, even today.

Because our EPA laws are quite behind, that meant there was opportunity for much cost savings for Holden to pair the engine with what we have than having to use something so high tech like the US used making it easier to compete against competition like Ford who were still using TBI like cave men, so a no brainier to go with A: a cheaper system B: that crapped all over what the competition was using anyway, C: made it competitive in price for the customer.

So yeah, would have been cool, but totally unnecessary to have that here. But on the down side if we did, none of the cool tuning stuff and this forum would have likely existed as the 808's advantage for enthusiasts is the high flexibility and ease of tuning. MAF and sequential for the enthusiast lacks much benefit and dramatically increases difficulty. And also limits EFI conversions to other engines for the most part.

I'm happy we got the dregs of the Delco system

[Charlescrown]

Not knowing the engine internals and the offset rods I have no idea if they are the same. The info on engine vibration was interesting. I always called the VN the vibration 6.The coil packs threw me a bit skew as the square ones were only on the early girls I think VN and maybe VP and the fact they used MAF way back. Yes California probably explain all that but I don't think where that far behind falling in line with the Euro standards which are becoming global standards.

[immortality]

90° V6 engines are known for having vibrations. I honestly believe the stock POS balancers are part of the problem. I pulled the balance shaft out of my old VN, fitted double row timing chain and a proper balancer (Powerbond race spec) and it ran smoother than at any other time I owned it.

Only the VN series 1 motors had the square ignition coils, after that they went to the 3 separate round coils as found on VP right through to VY.

[Wade]

https://youtu.be/AwRJsze_9m4?si=MvIjjxEXuCFmTbIE

[vlad01]

Not knowing the engine internals and the offset rods I have no idea if they are the same. The info on engine vibration was interesting. I always called the VN the vibration 6.The coil packs threw me a bit skew as the square ones were only on the early girls I think VN and maybe VP and the fact they used MAF way back. Yes California probably explain all that but I don't think where that far behind falling in line with the Euro standards which are becoming global standards.

Def the same engine. They were imported in for Holden here with just the mentioned Commodore specific bits to make them fit our application.

I have bought many NOS engine parts over the years from the US for these, and they are the exact same part, even down to the unique tooling marks in the cast parts.


The thing with a 90deg V6 is there is no way to properly balance them as the same with cross plane V8, but many tricks can be employed to get it good enough.

However, with V6, there is a choice of shared pins which gives perfect pair balance (other than bank offset) due to the pairs all having that 90deg angle, but this creates two inline 3s with not ideal firing order when treated as a combined 6.
Or the other option is split the crank to get the even fire, but this now breaks the perfect pair balancing. So they fudged this with under balancing and then using a shaft to cancel that out in the opposing plane. This is a bit hit and miss from engine to engine as the shaft isn't perfect, nor is the factory balance tolerances and then you have the shaft phasing drift due to the timing chain and the lash as well (the latter is the source of the famous "death" rattle, not an issue but a design characteristic).

This isn't a 90 deg V6 issue, but all V6, V12 and I do believe a V10 problem as well.

V8 doesn't have this split or not split pin dilemma but does still have the odd firing and rocking moment problem. You can fix the rocking moment in a V8, but make it very bad in destructive 2nd order by going flat plane. Rocking moment is "fixed" with big counter weights at the ends of the crank and even externally. V6 and V8 thing, inline 3 as well. Not sure on 5 and V10, but V12 is cancelled by mirrored end to end like the inline 6 does. But the counter weights still exist to help deal with the crank flex still experienced as if it were actually a bunch of inline 3s.

But going back to V6 and the equally finicky engines as above, changing the bank angle does not rid of the issue, but is just another compromise solution to the same problem, just a different way of achieving it. 120 deg, 90 deg and 60 deg all have the same problem, you either have to choose to band-aid the firing order, or band-aid the pair balancing.

From what I gather, the firing order seems to be more important in destructive harmonics than the fundamental balance when it comes to parts breaking. In other words, its better to fix the firing order for the engine.

I have deleted the shafts, and it works surprisingly well, without changing the stock under balance, there is a pretty strong shudder at 1600 rpm, but balanced to the standard 50% it's not perfect but overall I'd say as good as the average stock engine, often better, especially up at high rpm.