Best Rpms For An Rb30 Engine In A Small Bus

[funkymonkey]

Here ya go, all you need to know about rotaries:

http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/Ro...ck-t287781.html

rotaries are quite stable, efficient and reliable in stock N/A form. its only when tards thrash the living daylights out of twin turbo variants that you get reliability issues.

[busboy]

Here ya go, all you need to know about rotaries:

http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/Ro...ck-t287781.html

Wow, that was... er... informative.

Still, mostly there seems to be an agreement that they are little poorly on the torque unless they are turbo'd, so I think I'll stick with what I sort of understand, which in this case appears to be a reasonably well built straight 6 that does not eat three dinosaurs every five miles.

Mind you, whatever you think of the exhaust note of a rotary, it would be pretty darn suprising coming from an old bus leaving the lights with the duals smoking nicely...

[Birds]

VS ecotec and onwards feel the most refined of the 3.8 litre engines to me. They were at their most powerful (in factory form) from this point onwards and also pretty easy to find in long block form. All buick 3800 engines have a ton of interchangeable parts; heads off one onto blocks of another etc. Nice compact engines, not too difficult to work on. Maybe just give it some research first and see how feasible it is for you.

Avoid the T5 gearboxes for towing...they will stand up as a daily or to carry light loads, but it's not uncommon to break teeth in heavy duty applications. The T5 was superseded by the Getrag 260 (AKA M34, a 5 speed European made BMW style gearbox) which came in the VS series 2/3, VT, VX and VY Commodores with V6 engines - these are fairly strong gearboxes and would be up for towing, but some have oil supply issues and they cost a pretty penny to repair if something goes wrong. Seeing you're doing an engine/gearbox conversion anyway, I'd opt for something like a Supra 5 speed (can get some nice short bus/truck ratios in the W55 version, plus there are kits out there to fit them to any vehicle/engine)...or a T56 from an LS engined Holden if you can afford it.

[Birds]

I wasn't ragging on rotaries, just giving him the 50 page thread that if one has the patience to read past the first page will teach you nearly everything you need to know about rotaries lol.

[busboy]

VS ecotec and onwards feel the most refined of the 3.8 litre engines to me. They were at their most powerful (in factory form) from this point onwards and also pretty easy to find in long block form. All buick 3800 engines have a ton of interchangeable parts; heads off one onto blocks of another etc. Nice compact engines, not too difficult to work on. Maybe just give it some research first and see how feasible it is for you.

Avoid the T5 gearboxes for towing...they will stand up as a daily or to carry light loads, but not uncommon to break teeth in heavy duty applications. Seeing you're doing an engine/gearbox conversion anyway, I'd opt for something like a Supra 5 speed (can get some nice short bus ratios in the W55)...or a T56 if you can afford it.

Great advice, thank you.

[Birds]

Sorry, I just updated that post with a little more content on the gearboxes lol

[mad082]

on the fuel economy for a second, a falcon motor towing a caravan or anything like that will obviously use more fuel, but not that much more than what a rb30 will. also the extra fuel economy is only partly due to the extra weight but more to do with the massive increase in drag caused by towing a car on a trailer or a caravan, and the extra rolling resistance of the tyres. stick the motor in a bus and it will perform differently.

also if using a falcon or commodore motor i would have it reving a bit higher on the highway than the car it came out of. this will actually help a bit with fuel economy. you will be reving higher but you won't be labouring the motor as much so will be using less throttle % and therefore less fuel. that is the problem with the aussie motors. the diffs in them are so tall that the moment they get any sort of load on them the fuel economy goes to shit. despite the fact that they are only reving low you still have your foot a fair way down. but get them higher in the revs but with less throttle and they aren't that bad. in the standard car they will use under 10L/100km on the highway without a trailer on.

if you were to use an auto box out of the commodore or falcon, just make sure to fit an oil cooler. if going a manual i would get a heavy duty clutch as well.

as for commodores cracking heads, etc, that was mainly in the earlier models, like vn's etc, and was generally caused by people raping the arse out of them.

talking about the diesels, yes they will take reving at high revs for ages. my mate had an old nissan navara diesel that used to rev at 4200rpm on the highway. was slow as buggery though, even after the engine was rebuilt. if going to go diesel i would go a 4.2L out of the later model patrols, but they will set you back more money than you are probably willing to spend.

[mr 32]

if you pick the ford 4L make sure its a motor out of an au they have the metal head gasket unlike the early ones that like to spit head gaskets

[JezR31]

What about a VG33 + box out of a pathfinder?