Quote:
Originally Posted by geeteeohguy
Ask Derek Bieri how his LS swap is working out for him on the Power Tour. He ended up having to give up and buy a 1966 Ford pickup with analog technology in order to continue.
I disagree: I have driven LS powered cars and they don't have the 445 pounds of torque my old stock 400 has. They need to downshift to get up those steep grades. I've driven my dinosaur to Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, all over the place for the last 40 years at high speeds and in relative comfort and no down-side. I have zero need to ad a complex, failure-prone, soul-less powerplant to my classic cars. If I want the new car experience, I'll drive a new car.
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Agree, I've owned 4 LS powered vehicles. They aren't anymore reliable than the classics we've daily driven now for decades.
They do have more creature comforts but my wife and I didn't really care about all that and sold all that new stuff 20-something years ago and went right back to driving the old stuff. I'm to the point I don't really trust anything else anymore. Keep it stupid simple
If you want to compare power, to be honest coming from someone that had these 4th gens when they were new and stock, I raced and scaled all of them. They averaged mid to high 13's at 102-105 mph. The heaviest 4th gen was 3600 lbs. Not bad considering all the safety garbage, air bags, abs, and power everything. So in reality they weren't anymore powerful than a good running stock classic car.
Compare that to some of my stock 50 year old muscle cars and I have a few that run in the 13's at 104-105 mph in bone stock form, yet they also weigh closer to 4000 lbs. Add another 300+ lbs to the 4th Gen LS and watch how it slows down, lol.
Don't get me wrong, I do like the LS platform, but some people put it up on a pedestal like it's a god. I really didn't get happy with the performance of them until I started modding them. Small 224 @ .050 cam, valve spring and pushrod change, headers and exhaust and some tuning, along with a 12 bolt swap with 3.73 gears had my wifes 6 speed daily driver going bottom 12's at 114 mph on street tires. Respectable, but I could do that with any car, doesn't have to be an LS. She also went on to rack up 160,000 miles on that "modified" engine
They don't have to be stock to be reliable.
That gets back to what I've said in past threads on that subject in regards to reliability when building these engines. You don't have to build a stock engine to be a reliable engine. You can have a modified 500 or 600 hp engine be completely reliable if done correctly. That means you can't throw these things together with a ball hone and rings, shove a cam in you think works fine with out of the box valve springs etc.. and top it off with Scorpion rockers on those chinese heads that came right out of the box. eeek.. Ya gotta spend the money and do it right. With excellent machine work and good quality parts used inside, proper assembly and attention to detail, as every build should be. Don't assume because it's new it's good and ready to go. These engine can go 100,000 miles and be trouble free. But you're going to spend $10,000 plus on a solid build. That's just the way it is.