Buick 3.8 V6 Engine Block and Girdle

The stock Buick V6 is strong for a small V6 but it has trouble holding together once you start going faster than 11.5s in the quarter mile. Many people modify the block adding billet main caps to avoid joining the DOC (drove over the crank) club. I witnessed a friend drive over his crank at the 1996 Buick Nationals in Bowling Green Kentucky. Fred bought a short block from Ricardo LaCosta (LaCosta Motorsports in Miami) and myself, Cal Hartline, Lance Ward, Chris McCord and Brad ??? spent the evenings that week building a motor for Fred - in the parking lot of the Villager Inn. There was usually quite a crowd on hand to kibbitz since there isn't a whole lot to do after hours in a small town in Kentucky. All this to say I have billet main caps and have gone further and added a "girdle" to the bottom end of the motor. This is a 5/8" thick piece of metal bolted on to the bottom of the motor and reinforcing the main caps to avoid flexing under tremendous loads.



Here's the empty engine block. Note the main studs and the head studs.
 

Parts to the girdle. You also get ARP main studs. See below.
 

Notice #2 and #3 main caps are billet. All the main caps are milled to the same height and shimmed 0.004" higher than the oil pan rail. When the oil pan studs are tightened, this puts extra support on the main caps. You do need to have the block align-bored with the girdle torqued down properly.
 

Here's the girdle installed. Sealing with silicon sealer all around is a definite requirement. Sealing around the rear main also requires liberal sealer. I had the motor in and out 3 times before I got rid of oil leaks the first time. (What you see here isn't the first for this motor.) I also fill in the counter bore holes around the oil pan studs with sealer. I found oil managed to leak down the threads. I overfill the motor by 3 quarts and let it sit two days on the engine stand to make sure I have it sealed.
 

Another of the girdle installed. Note the oil pick-up is extended. Adding the girdle is like having a deeper oil pan.