I know this is a dsm forum but I wanted to post this here because I don't like any of the 3000gt forums and because I'm more familiar here and I love this community. Now onto the question. I recently came across the opportunity to buy a 3000gt for dirt cheap but that comes with a price and that is, it needs a new motor(non turbo) according to the owner because it has a knock in the lower part of the motor, he says it's still drivable if I wanted to take it home but not to beat on it too hard and he wouldn't recommend it. My question is should I rebuild the motor or swap for a vr4 twin turbo engine? What's the most cost efficient thing to do? I'm also going to look at it next thursday so anything I should look out for?

Put a short block in it. After you have the heads rebuilt. (2) Find a wrecked car with the same motor at pick and pull and buy it.

A swap would be a pretty big financial undertaking unless you have money set aside for the motor/ecu/harness (~$2,300.00 from a JDM importer, not including shipping), unless you can get the car for relatively cheap, and by cheap I mean less than $1,000.00. And this is all basing it off of being a decently maintained vehicle outside of the fact it has a shot motor. Ultimately it's up to you what you want to do... If you have always wanted a 3000GT and don't mind the investment, go for it. I would be prepared to spend somewhere in the ballpark of $4-5K on parts/labor not including the cost of the car, unless you're doing the work yourself, on a project like this. My estimate might even be a little too conservative. But the choice is yours, and we'll be here to give insight if needed.

Owner of a couple of 3000GTs VR4's here and know that platform like it's my religion.


First, I'm not sure if you're talking about a 3000GT VR4 or a NA 3000GT. Because a regular 3000GT is no fun, and in my opinion, just not worth it. I've owned a SOHC 3000gt and it was a pig. Slow as hell. It was like a civic engine in a pick-up truck. The DOHC SL isn't that much better either. But when you get into VR4 territory, it's a completely different beast. It. Really. Is.


You can put a VR4 engine into an SL, but by the time you finish with everything that's necessary, you might as well have gotten yourself a VR4 in the first place. Cost wise, just not worth it. And since you won’t have the AWD drive train, it's not really a VR4.

Your luck of finding a VR4 in the junk yard is pretty low. I currently run a custom Chrome browser script that searches all Pick and Pull junk yards in California and runs their VIN through a 3S vin database that tells me almost everything about the car (color, engine, option, packages, interior, etc- 3S Story teller/Y-pass). The percentage of actual VR4s in the PNP’s junk yards is incredibly low. With this I wouldn't rely on junk yards to have specific 3000GT VR4 components.


The 3S platform is quite expensive to dabble with. Parts are scarce and there's only a few handful of vendors: 3sx, ips, maximal, ninja, dynamic...
Not only that, parts are not cheap, you can't do homemade stuff like you see here on dsmT.


The owner could possibly have spun a bearing which, I going to assume he did, as a worst case scenario. That means the almost everything under the hood is gone. If you can get the car for under $1K, I “might” hop on it, but I’d have to consider other things such as a the year, interior condition, etc.

3000GT VR4s get more and more rare as they approach the year 2000. Ie. they only made 237 3000GT VR4 in 1999 making it a very unique sight if you’ve ever seen ono in real life. Yes they do look slightly different.

http://www.stealth316.com/2-production.htm



3si.org is the bible of the 3si platform. Use it. It's highly organized as opposed to dsmtuners. There's much more useful information there and can easily be searched with good answers. The members there are mature adults. With that, you'll quickly find quality answers that also reference to quality parts.


PM me if you have any questions. I’d be glad to help.