A long time ago, a friend of mine once said that building a high horsepower 3.9l V6 is like dressing up a pig, that the costs outweighed the gains. Back then I kinda laughed, but now not only do I see his point, I agree with it. Yes, you can build up a high horsepower 3.9l V6, but I can’t see how it would be worth it compared to just swapping it out with a V8. But as reluctant as I am to say this, I’ve seen this first hand.

Back in May 2011 when I was just about to wrap up the 340 project, everything went to hell when we found out that the mother#ucker that built the engine used the wrong rod bearings (and later we found out the main bearings were wrong too), I had to make a decision….. send the engine back and hope it came back right a few months later, or just find something to throw in there for the time being and come back to the 340 another day. The same night I found out the 340 wasn’t in running order, I was on car-part.com looking for a 5.2l V8, the next morning my ass was in the 05 picking one up, and that evening I had it in my garage for an all-night wire wheel & spraybomb session. It actually turned out better than I had expected, both in looks and performance.

The lesson came later when I drove it… here was a BONE STOCK 5.2l V8 block, heads and cam, with just a M1 intake and headers, just out-performing my old 3.9l V6. It had plenty of torque and HP, and I had under $1000 into it. Way less than taking a 3.9 and building it up with V8 rods & pistons, custom grind cam, re-ground crank, ported heads & intake. Plus I was at stock level with the 5.2… I could add more like heads, cam, stroker crank, whatever I wanted….. and get even MORE horsepower. Not saying it’s a bad idea, but building up a V6 just sounds dumb now…. when a 5.2 was just so friggin easy.

And it’s gonna get more interesting when Denny at Sharadon gets the 340 back in order!