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The Buick V6, popularly referred to as the 3800 and 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. It is a derivative of Buick's 215 cubic inch aluminium V8 family, which interestingly also went on to become the Rover V8, another engine with a very long life (1960–2006) ==Fireball V6== The first engine in this family was introduced in 1961 for the 1962 model year Buick Special with Buick's engine, the first V6 in an American car. Because it was derived from Buick's aluminum V8, it has a 90° bank between cylinders and an uneven firing pattern due to the crankshaft having only three crank pins set at 120° apart, with opposing cylinders (1-2, 3-4 and 5-6) sharing a crank pin in, as do many V8 engines. The uneven firing pattern was often perceived as roughness, leading a former American Motors executive to crow "It was rougher than a cob." In 1977, Buick redesigned the crankshaft to a "split-pin" configuration to create an "even-firing" version. The crank pins associated with the opposing cylinders were offset from each other by 30°. The relatively small offset did not require flying arms to be incorporated, however a 3.0 mm thick flange was built in between the offset crank pins to prevent the connecting rod big-ends from "walking" off the crank pin bearing journal and interfering with the adjacent big end. The 3.0 mm thick flange effectively caused the connecting rods on the left-hand bank of cylinders (forward bank for FWD applications) to move 3.0 mm forward relative to the right-hand bank, but the engine block remained unchanged compared to the odd-fire engine. Since the cylinders center-lines were no longer centralized over the crank pin bearing journals, the connecting rods were re-designed with the big-ends offset from the piston pin ends by 1.5 mm. The engine in this configuration became known to have "off-center bore spacing". The off-center design continued up until the 1988 LN3 version of the engine, when the left-hand bank of cylinders was moved forward relative to the right-hand bank. Although the actual bore spacing between cylinders on the same bank remained unchanged at 107.7 mm (4.240"), the LN3 and later engines became known to have "on-center bore spacing". ===198=== Buick Division, concerned about high manufacturing costs of their innovative aluminum 215 V8, sought to develop a cheaper, cast-iron engine based on the same tooling. They settled on an unusual 90° V6 layout that was essentially the architecture of the '215' less two cylinders. In initial form, it had a bore of and stroke of , for an overall displacement of . It weighed about more than the aluminum engine, but was far cheaper to produce. Dubbed the Fireball V6, it became the standard engine in the 1962 Buick Special. In their test that year, ''Road & Track'' was impressed with Buick's "practical" new V6, saying it "sounds and performs exactly like the aluminum V8 in most respects." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Buick V6 engine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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