All LSX Show

Hey, the horsepower shop is open for business and we're glad you came in.

Today's show is all about new and old benchmarks and GM high performance. Well, first, the old, back in the mid sixties, the 427 big block set a horsepower high water mark when it was introduced in the second generation Corvette.

Since then, they've dropped them into GM muscle cars like Chevelle and Acadian Beaumont's. Oh, you're not up on your Beaumont's. Well, this one belongs to Nick Hedge

and it's a 64 model that they only made for a couple of years to sell in Pontiac dealerships in Canada. Hey,

it's got a Chevelle body just like a Malibus,

but the trim is unique to the car.

Tail lights look like they were transplanted from a Pontiac.

A grill that really resembles the GT Os

and an interior. That's all

lemons

except for the Chevelle shifter and console with a 430 horse 427 under the hood. This thing was no doubt a Canadian Cobra killer in its day.

Yeah, the 427 big block was a killer motor back in its day. But these days you can get the same displacement a lot more power in a smaller package.

And here's where you start.

It's the new LSX bow tie iron block. One of the best things that GM perform as far as this

come up with years. Here's a cutaway of one that shows you the extra thick deck, the Siamese boars and that true priority made oily. Plus, there are other features we'll show you later today. We're going to break some new ground on horsepower by using this block and all those parts. We're gonna build our own LSX engine one. We'll put to the test a little later on back on the engine, dyno.

But first, we're gonna experience how some heads up racers are using this block to build some big horsepower race engines.

Welcome to Memphis Motorsports Park where this weekend's N MC A drag racing event features a one of a kind quarter mile race within the race. It's the inaugural LSX shootout.

Here's a question for you. How building a race motor a lot like building a house? But don't ask me, let's ask a professor if you're going to put up a building, you get better get the foundation right.

We got the foundation. Now it's time to start putting all the decorations on it.

The foundation that Warren Johnson refers to is the hot New LSX block. The one he helped develop for GM performance parts.

It's now a race proven platform used by many of the shootout cars, especially in the fastest drag radio class.

The LSX block helped us out a lot but it seals up real good problems that we always had with the aluminum block. You know, it's fascinating to see the combinations racers are using to build up their LS blocks with power ADDers like Nitrous

or in the case of Bill Maloney's Corvette,

a turbo charger that works well with his LS ported racing heads.

GM really hit a home run with this block.

Uh The heads are awesome.

You know, with very little work, you get these heads to flow way over 300 these flow close to four.

You know, those are big block numbers. It reminds me of uh being a part of the GM family back in the late 19 sixties when every word was high performance. Of course, new age, high performance doesn't necessarily make racing easy. Just ask them

Michigan team behind this 2000 Camaro. I put it in the wall at Norwalk, uh just a couple days ago at about 100 and 50 miles an hour on the wall.

And from that point, it's been nonstop thrash. I'd say the scariest part was the frame because I wasn't sure what was gonna happen. I thought maybe the car was scrapped and when we uh got it to the, to the alignment shop and we were able to straighten the frame out.

That was probably the biggest relief. We were most concerned of the car being fixable

camp, ran a qualifying run of 785 at 100 and 85 miles an hour

second only to Steve

Tish who led the pack with a 779 in his 98 Camaro

Steve's foundation is an LS two block that he modified to handle the abuse of heads up racing.

It's got 1/5 hole along the bottom of the boards to allow us to clamp the head of the block better. We said hopefully

be able to keep more of the power in the engine instead of leaking it out.

And he also came up with some cool mud inside the car too with the bone stock shifter that's been uh notched and stopped for, for racing shifting. I just, uh,

put it in drive,

slap it for a second and then push the button for third and

that's pretty much it.

Now, this is our inner cooler tank. It's, uh, basically a stock aluminum turkey seat

that we

fed up,

put our water and our ice in.

Uh, it's also got our air to air transmission cooler inside

and, uh, it's got my overflow tanks mounted to the back.

No, no.

On Sunday eliminations day, the regular N MC A class cars battled it out for spots in the finals.

I

but the LSX shootout rounds created their own brand of excitement,

especially those drag radio contenders

top qualifier. Curly, had trouble on the line in round two against Paul Majors.

But Kemp, the comeback kid from Michigan battled his way to a final run

as did Major in his 01 bet running consistently in the high

se

in the finals. It was kept cutting a near perfect light winning over Major by 2/100 of a second.

When I pulled up in the staging lanes, I was telling Steve,

you know, it's like a dream. I don't feel like I'm here right now.

I shouldn't be here. I don't know how I'm here.

I feel like this just isn't right.

And when I came back at the end of the lane,

it's all real. It's all real.

A real and amazing comeback win and the first ever Lsx shootout.

Hey, welcome back to horsepower where the build up of our LSX is about to begin. Now, no doubt this iron bow tie block is gonna be around for a long time to come, whether it's a foundation for a stout streeter or a full blown race car. Now, the block comes from the factory with a 3994. And once you get your new block board and honed to 4.125 you'll have those 427 cubic inches

that you're ready to fill it with parts that fit your budget and power plants. Most of the ones we picked are the same you'll find in an LS seven like this Ford steel four inch stroke crank shaft with a 58 tooth reluct wheel.

Then after we live up the bearings, we could drop on these heavy duty main caps that use six fasteners, counting the ones on the sides,

they get ready to give it a whack buddy.

Then we torque them to specs from the center out.

The strength and lightweight of our piston rod combination are gonna be critical keys to make it power that motor.

These rods are forged titanium that measure just over six inches. Now, we stepped up to these forged Molly pistons that have a graphical coating on them. That's all about reducing friction.

Now, when we say these are lightweight, we mean lightweight, check this out. Here's a typical aluminum piston hanging on an H beam rod.

It weighs in at

1371 g. Now, here's ours that tips the scales at

1082 almost a 300 g difference with the rings in place. We can install the pistons and rods

drop the rod caps in place and torque them down.

Next is the camshaft which is an LS stage three. Now, it's got a duration of 233 on the intake, 276 on the exhaust at 50,000. Now, the max lift is 595 on both the intake and exhaust and that's set up with a 1.7 rocker arm.

Now we install this LSX CAM plate

and with the timing chain in place, the oil pump goes on next,

then we spin the motor over to drop in the windage tray,

followed by the oil pump pickup.

Now with the front rear covers bolted up, we can finish up the bottom end with this aluminum oil pan. Now, this block will accept any LS series oil pump or oil pan combination. Plus the block accommodates either wet or dry sump oil systems.

We're using aluminum LS seven heads to build our 427. They come with CNC ports and chain

and we got ours fully assembled with these 220 titanium intake valves. When 60 sodium filled exhaust valves and combustion chambers measure 70 CCS.

Now we're looking at a combustion ratio of just over 11 half to one. But before we install these, remember, it's an LS block lifters. Gotta go in first

and like all Ls motors, the lifter stay captured inside plastic retainers

so you don't even have to remove them. During a camp swap,

the heads go on over a set of three layer gaskets

and they're held in place with a RP studs.

Next we built up the cam position sensor and bracket

the balancer

followed by the water pump.

Then we go on top to drop in the push rides

the next set of LS seven rocker arms and notice how the intake rocker arm is offset

to properly match up with the valve stem.

Now we can drop on this valley cover,

bulk up the valve covers

and install a pair of LS coil pack assemblies.

Finally, we're ready for some induction. Now, we could go with this fuel injection set up. But since we're in the business of making horsepower, we're gonna try out this new LS seven carbureted intake that's race ready right out of the box and accepts any 4150 style carburetor,

which in this case is gonna be a double pumper 850 we'll run some 93 octane fuel through.

Well, with that, we're ready to roll this LSX 427 back into the dyno cell wire up the ignition and see if this new small block lives up to all the hype. Yep. The LSX is dyno debut and hey, I bet this thing's gonna make at least 650 horseback on the pump that would be living up to the hype.

It would.

Hey, we're back with you now at the horsepower

dyno,

we're, we're about to see how much horsepower we can get out of this LSX 427.

Of course, the project all started with a solid foundation,

one of the hottest and most bulletproof blocks to come out of GM Performance Park.

Our LSX iron block was filled with a Ford steel crank, heavy duty mains that use six fasteners

and Molly forged pistons hanging on Titanium rods.

We stuffed in a stage three hydraulic rover cam shaft

ed bolted up a pair of LS seven aluminum heads.

Our intake manifold is a new LS seven, single plane fed by an 850 CFM double pumper carb. Now, although this is the first time an LSX has been tested on TV. I'm almost willing to bet money. This thing makes at least 650 horsepower or more. After loading the motor up on the dyno

Cart, we gave it this ignition source, an MS D six LS controller which is perfect for carbureted LSS

with connections to the map sensor

coil packs

up front the cam position sensor and out back the crank sensor and to get some spark to the plugs, these Taylor thunderbolt wires that are 8.2 millimeters with 50 os of resistance per foot.

Well, I'm ready to hear some noise out of this thing. Are you

642 horsepower? Not 650. But hey, it's really close and check this out 563 ft pounds of torque

before we call it quits though. Let's see what happens when we add a one inch spacer which can increase the air velocity, keep the carburetor cooler and should increase the horsepower and torque.

Look at that, the spacer picked us up 18 horsepower for a total of 660. The torques up eight for a total of 570. Well, I'm glad I didn't take him up on that bet. By the way, this is just one parts combination you can use on this new LSX block which sells for about 1900 bucks.

By the way, GM, performance parts has come up with a cool way for you to do an online virtual engine build with other parts combinations

and you could even conduct your own virtual

dyno test.

All right, we've got a horsepower reunion with an LSX powered former project car coming right up.

You're watching horsepower for a DVD copy of this episode. Just go to power Block tv.com and order your copy for just 595 plus shipping and handling. Start your own horsepower collection delivered right to your door from the power block.

We couldn't do a show about the new LSX without including our old friend, the 69 Nova, a popular project race car now driven by Robin Lawrence in the N MC A. But you know, we can't help seeing it the way it used to look back when its home was the horsepower shop.

We bought it black in bone stock before it was back half

and powered with a GM performance parts. 572.

It eventually was ape rapped and became one of our most famous project cars

and not a bad performer out on the strip.

Yeah, but not quite enough for Robin's plans when he got the keys to it, he not only swapped out the chassis suspension and interior took out the 572 put in an LSX block added some supported C five R heads, a sheet metal intake from Hughes and A pair of 1150 hallways with Nitrous. I gotta tell you it was a kick seeing this thing in its new life as a star of the LSX shootout.

When Robin Lawrence took the supernova from a bracket car to a nostalgia Pro street racer.

It was a groundbreaking endeavor.

Now, the trick is to get the car down the track to compete in the class. Usually mid to high sevens,

small blocks aren't really

sought after in the Nostalgia Pro suit class. It's more of a big block class.

So it's going to take a lot of,

a lot of races before that tide changes. But what it does do is it, is it really influences or let people know

the stability of this type of block if it can, if it can hang with,

with the cars or the engines that are currently in the class

when we had the Nova, it had an automatic transmission. But here's how Robin uses his new five speed

Linco to do a burnout starting in second gear. I bring the engine up about 3000 RPM.

I snap the clutch. I mat the throttle

and as soon as I see the RPM s come up, I basically shift the third shift the fourth, the fifth

let off off off on the button.

Continue to keep my foot down on the pedal, steer the car out past the starting line,

stab the clutch,

let the liberty go back to neutral.

Well, Robin's all set for some full blown passes here in Memphis.

But first I just had to sit in our old cars, new seat and try out that shifter.

See why you're laughing.

Nice.

Ain't nothing like the old nova

a long waited moment for race fans and the horse power guys too.

Robin's debut passes were only in the mid to high eights,

but that's a good start.

And for us at horsepower, a pretty good finish for the project Supernova.

Here's a way to wake up your LS One engine from

Wan. It's a John Lingenfelter signature aluminum intake manifold. Now it's beefy design leaves you plenty of room for porting and it accepts all the factory LS One components. Now it'll handle the pressures of blower nitrous or turbos and it comes with all the necessary hardware to install it.

You can get it in either a satin or Polish finish prices start at 560 bucks. Earlier today, we made 660 horsepower with that LSX 427 back in the

dyno.

And that wouldn't have been possible without a good set of headers to efficiently remove all the exhaust from the cylinders. Now, for that, we turn to Doug's for these long tube headers made especially for Ls Motors

inside 67 to 69 F bodies. Now, like all their headers, they're designed and tested inside the vehicles that are supposed to fit

and you can get yours in a plain finish or this metallic ceramic finish with prices starting at under 550 bucks. Well, this week it was an LSX 427. Next week we'll build something else to make power. See you then.