Thanks for the blessing Don Fiero !

The weekend was finally here and the acquisition of a DOHC engine weighed heavily on my mind, but the gods of HP were not looking down on me with any favor as Saturday morning arrived. I was overloaded with menial tasks and the usual family commitments, it looked as if my junkie itch would have to be scratched some other time.

The day started with the repair of a hole the resident squirrel family’s matriarch had chewed in the eave of my roof for the third time, and this time the little bastard shredded a box in my attic containing some of my prized still in the blister pack toy motorcycles that I have been collecting since I was twelve.

Now I’m no tree hugging PETA supporting fascist, but I do what I can do and believe in live and let live, but this insult was too much to bear. It was on !!!

I scrambled down stairs opened the safe grabbed the AR15 and a clip and headed toward the back door when I ran into my 6 six year old who inquisitively asked “Daddy what are you doing ???” Smart girl, the AR will make too much noise, I turned and hurried back to the safe and traded the AR for the bolt action double duce.

By this time my daughter was loaded up and off to learn how to spend too much money with my wife. I set the rifle in the corner and began my work on the roof, keeping an eye out for the illusive house eating Squirrelzilla.

An hour or so later I heard the horrible sound of a disk brake rotor grinding on the rivets of a worn out pad, it was my nephew limping into the driveway looking for some help.
I climbed down off the roof and when I down my nephew was already around back telling me his woes when he stopped short to ask about the riffle in the corner. I mumbled a few curses to my self an exclaimed that it was best if he didn’t ask any questions unless he wanted to be incriminated as well.

I put the rifle away, got some tools and set to work on his brakes, it had to be the thinnest, most cracked rotor that I had ever seen. After removing the rotor I found a galled spindle, my mind suddenly deduced that the spindle was an expensive dealer item and that a trip to the junkyard was in order to look at the availability of DOHC… I mean get a spindle “what luck” I excitedly said. Lucky !!! my nephew said how is a bad spindle lucky ???
My mind raced as I searched for the appropriate response… “Lucky the wheel didn’t fall off” I said in the most serious tone I could muster “I have a lot to do today, but Fiero I mean family comes first” I told him.

I called my brother for some back up and began to load the hell box up with tools for the junk yard sortie when Squirrelzilla crossed my mind, the gods have other plans for me today I thought, I’ll get her a$$ another day.

I loaded the truck and my brother arrived in shortly there after. With the truck loaded up we were off to the local one price fits all junkyard.

We arrived at the junkyard about noon.



It looked as if we were in luck the place was almost empty, it looked like we would have the run of the place.



Fortunately GM is the first section in the yard, as it is one long skinny mother.



As we approached the first car in the first row was an Aurora with some pesky interloper tinkering away underneath.



I turned out it was my brother who had gone on ahead of me as I signed us in and paid the sacrificial dollar to enter checking the oil plug for bits of metal.



The Aurora had a 3.5 DOHC engine in it.



A check of the odometer reviled no clue to the mileage as it was a digital readout.



My brother found copious amounts of metal on the plug, no need to use the magnet for a better check. This is exactly what we expected to find. The body of the car had no damage to it, it likely found its way to bone yard via a bad engine or transmission and after investigating it was obvious the engine was the culprit.

We moved farther into the jungle of cars and found another Aurora midway in.



It also sported a 3.5 DOHC engine.



This body of this car also looked ok. A quick check of the plug produced no metal, so we inserted the rope magnet and found no metal on it either. This could possibly be a donor.



This car was equipped with a digital odometer as well so no accurate mileage could be ascertained from it, but a check of the glove box revealed and inspection slip from December of 2008 with 108,000 miles registered on the slip.

We continued deeper into yard and found a Z34 that looked as if it had been rolled with a crushed roof and damaged hood that looked promising.



A quick look under the hood the car had some promise.



It revealed a 3.4 DOHC engine that had a few minor parts removed.



A quick look at the odometer showed the sad truth, 246,000 miles this baby was all whored out, as it turns out a closer look at the car revealed lots of footprints on the hood and windshield. A case of river dance not rollover perpetrated by some testosterone driven teens while broke down in someone’s yard I’m sure.



We pulled a spindle and found an almost new rotor for my nephew’s car and headed out of the yard.



All of this 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 and 3600 engine designation is confusing. Are they all part of the 60D engine family or just some of them and what parts interchange between them, what's the best year and so on. All of this will take some research.

Any one with information on this subject is welcome to chime in.

Thanks for looking.

I will be taking one of my rods (the cracked one) to the machine shop tomorrow along with one of the good stock TGP rods to have it narrowed to fit my crank so it can be set up in the block to check to see if it will clear the block castings.

I took some measurements with the stock rod and it looks like they will fit, the only close spot is where the big end of the rod passes the bottom of the bore. This looks tight but I only need to clear it by 100 thousandths to allow for the aluminum to expand. Hopefully it will clear with out modifying the rod.

I will post some pictures when I have all the pieces in place.

Thanks for looking

Thanks for your interest GT, After reading up on the 3.4 DOHC it seems that the short first gear in the Getrag and the strong torque curve of the turbo will propel the engine nicely until the real power comes on above 4000. It should be nasty.

Thanks for your input.

Rotten,

I used to have the same attitude about aluminum rods in a street motor, but after doing some research I found that most people like my self have no experience with aluminum rods on the street and everything I/we know is what we have heard. Check out BME web site. The link is in my first post on this thread.
Bill has some aluminum rod on the street claims that are worth looking at. I also spoke with Bill in person as well as allot of others about aluminum on the street and I have been impressed by their claims (suckered in)
I’m going to put there claims to the test in a 7000 rpm engine. It should be fun an informative and possibly tragically expensive if it goes wrong.

Wish me luck. Thanks for your interest.

Thanks for your support IMAC I don’t get allot of that around here with these hair brained Ideas of mine.

“Think out of the box, be different”
Some one who made allot of money

I’ve posted this in another thread but here are some excerpts from the BME site.
Urban legends abound in the gearhead community. One is: aluminum connecting rods don't work in street engines. Prior to the mid-'70s, that might have been true, however, introduction of the Bill Miller Engineering Forged Aluminum Connecting Rod in 1975 provided an exception to that myth.
The BME Rod has good durability in high-end, high-power, street/strip or hot street engines because it is die-forged, rather than cut out of an aluminum plate. Bill Miller Engineering's unique, high-strength, aluminum alloy further enhances fatigue strength such that the potential durability of BME Rod rivals that of many forged steel rods and exceeds that of a few.
About 20 years ago, a few resourceful engine builders, led by H-O Racing's, Ken Crocie, began using BME Rods in very-high-performance street engines. Crocie, a racing and street/strip Pontiac V8 specialist, faced with a shortage of acceptable steel rods for Pontiacs, began to use BME Aluminum Rods. While a few other engine builders have followed Crocie's lead, admittedly, use of the Bill MIller Engineering Rod in street engines has not been widespread, but that's only because of its higher cost and the stubborn belief that any aluminum rod is unsuitable for street use.
"In a street application, using the aluminum rod is a no brainer," BME President, Bill Miller recently said in an interview with an automotive magazine. "I don't know exactly how the myth that aluminum rods can't be used on the street got started, but I'll guess that early manufacturers of aluminum rods, back in the 60s and early-70s, weren't making them using the forging process we're using. With the material we've got and they way we manufacture the connecting rods, they'll live a couple hundred thousand miles on the street because a street application is, for the most part, low load. You gotta understand, our basic Aluminum Rod is made for 10,000 rpm and 800-hp. The design criteria for the connecting rod is way overkill for what it's gonna see on the street. We been running aluminum rods on the street for 20 years."
More of this can be seen at:

http://www.bmeltd.com/rods.htm

I got started in earnest yesterday with finding out if I will be able to fit these rods in the tightly packed 60D block.
I am using the TGP block as my test bed, it should almost identical in the critical clearance areas, but there are no guarantees until I acquire a DOHC block. Hopefully this weekend.
I called my regularly used machine shop, and they were swamped with race season hardware. We have a mill and a lathe in the shop that we recently acquired but we have not wired them to the phase converter yet. So I called another reputable shop and they said to bring them down so off I went.
I only took the cracked rod to be machined down to fit the journal for test fitting, no point in paying for something I can’t use and there is no hurting this cracked rod.

I arrived at Ballos Precision Machine after lunch.



I promised you guys some pics of the rod with the crack so here it is…



You can see the crack at the top part of the picture just to the right of the pin hole, it shows up as a black line, also notice the flat spot on the rounded part of the rod, some one dropped this baby, also notice the dent is opposite of the crack.
Now it is hard to tell anything about this crack from the picture, but I can tell you it is so shallow it could be buffed out. Even as shallow it is, I do not trust it.

Here is a Full view of the rod.



I spoke with the head machinist for over an hour, very nice and informative. He wants to see what happens with these rods on the street as well. I will get the rod back today and post up when I have bolted it up to the crank with all the gory details.

Thanks for looking.

I considered the oil spray and aluminum rods a potential problem as well, but after speaking to the machine shop, 80 % the shrink and swell of the aluminum happens during the start up and cool down of the engine and should pose no problem once the engine has warmed up.
The one warning Bill Miller gave was to allow the engine to warm up completely before driving. The reason for this is the large amount of shrink and swell at the rod bearings during warm up. He said that this was of great importance especially in the winter when this phenomenon is at its greatest, thus the reason for the aluminum rods greater bearing clearance.
Truthfully I am stoked about using the aluminum rods for this project, regardless of the outcome, after some investigation and some testimonials I have decided to use a lighter flywheel as well (not to light) with this engine to try and get it to that 4000 and above RPM range where the engine really starts to make power.

I have been getting the run around on a 93 z34 w/ 5speed and 137,000 on the ODO
They were asking a 1000 $ for the car, it runs for about 5 minutes and then dies, let it sit for 30 minutes and it will do it all over again ??? I’m sure there is nothing wrong with the engine itself so I offered 500 $ and they said they would sell it for that, but have not contacted me back yet.

Hopefully this will come through.

Will,

I am interested in the 3.4 DOHC parts you mentioned earlier in this thread, let me know how to contact you or I can give you some information.

Let me know…