Buick V6 Engine

Buick V6 Engine

The Buick V6, initially marketed as Fireball at its introduction in 1962, was a large V6 engine used by General Motors. The block is made of cast iron and all use two-valve-per-cylinder iron heads, actuated by pushrods.

The 3800 was on the Ward's 10 Best Engines of the 20th century list, made Ward's yearly 10 Best list multiple times, and is one of the most-produced engines in history. To date, over 25 million have been produced.

In 1967, GM sold the design to Kaiser-Jeep. The muscle car era had taken hold, and GM no longer felt the need to produce a V6, considered in North America an unusual engine configuration at the time. The energy crisis a decade later prompted the company to buy the design back from American Motors (AMC), who had by that point bought Kaiser-Jeep, and the descendants of the early 231 continue to be the most-common GM V6 as it developed into a very durable and reliable design.

Though the pre-3800 RWD V6 uses the BOP bellhousing pattern that it inherited from its V8 ancestor, an oddity of both the FWD and RWD 3800 V6 is that although it is a 90° V6, it uses the GM 60° V6 bell housing. For use in the RWD applications, the bellhousings on both the manual and automatic transmissions are altered slightly.

This engine has the cylinders numbered 1-3-5 on the LEFT -hand bank (FRONT bank for FWD applications) and 2-4-6 on the right-hand bank, the number 1 cylinder being the furthest from the flywheel end. The firing order is 1-6-5-4-3-2.

The engine was produced at the Flint North plant in Flint, Michigan, with engine blocks and cylinder heads cast at the Grey Iron plant (now the GM Saginaw Metal Casting Operations plant) in Saginaw, Michigan.