We are currently in the process of building a 98 Camaro into a racecar for Champcar endurance racing and other road course racing. We are using the 3.8 to stay competitive in our class. This isn’t our first Fbody or racecar build but it is the first time I have ever dove into building an endurance race engine as well as doing internal work to a 3800 series engine. When it comes to the 3800 is there anything that stands out as a weak point or something that could be done to make the engine more reliable? (Oil galleys, cooling issues, etc) Other cars we have built have oil coolers and big windage trays on oversized oil pans etc but as they say in champcar rules ther is no free part so I am essentially looking to get the most out of the stock/GM parts while possibly only doing a few performance modifications (cam, valves, etc) to the car if any at all. Keep in mind this engine may have to run continuously for 24 hours at some point. Any input is appreciated.

 

You could open up the oil passages, run clev. 77 bearings, run a oil volume kit from Zzperformance, also their Alm. Lower intake gaskets , Alm. coolant elbows. If your going deep in the engine a nice cam and forged pistons would be nice. Zzperformance and Intense racing have all the 3800 parts. I went with ported heads with Manley 1.90 and 1.57 valves and ported upper/lower intakes but I’m going turbo route. Also HPtuners for tunning always helps.

 

A friemd did a cam swap in a 99.... 3.8 5 speed....also 4.11 gears.... ran 14.4 in the quarter . He took the cat off.... and before he sold it for a used vette.... was chasing a rich condition with it.... but it sure felt peppy when i was in it

Sorry i dont remember the cam ,etc for it.