Is the LS1 the best engine ever installed in a F-body?

[5.0THIS]

As far as HP, which was brought up at some point in this thread. The mags have done several comparisons between the gen 1 sbc and the LS engines. Both built identical as could be expected and ran on the same dyno. Interestingly enough both engines made very similar power in all combinations I've seen. Within a few HP and TQ of each other so I don't see a big advantage either way in that department.

What I do see is the cost to build an old gen 1 sbc is still much cheaper thanks to it's existance of 60 years young now, and it still being one of the most popular engines of all time used in a wide market among street rodders and the like.

Show me all these articles with gen 1 small blocks making similar power. Me and you both know that LS1 heads are 15 degree heads that absolutely crush any factory small block head ever made in the 60s and 70s. The intake, multi port injection design, and computer controlled aspect are all going to lead to an engine that has vastly superior response, refinement, and driveability.

To get an old small block to even come close to competing, you're running aftermarket heads, a bigger cam, more compression, something... Which negates most cost advantages.

If I had to pick a favorite performance engine, no way I'd go anything from the 60s and 70s. I'll stick with the new stuff that's going to ass rape the old stuff every time. Sure you can build any engine to make immense power, but if we're comparing stock for stock engines from different generations it just isn't any contest. I mean have you seen those 1/4 mile times for older cars? It's a joke. Muscle cars were slow as balls. Maybe if you had a 427 vette or a Cobra. Otherwise, a bunch of 13 second monsters running under 105mph with their supposedly 500+hp hemis and LS6s.

[Firebirdjones]

You gotta read more

Haven't you been to the pure stock drags? It shows the real potential of these cars you call slow. It's the closest thing today that you'll get on stock 40+ year old muscle cars. I ran this class with my lowly 70 RAIII formula rated at a measly 345hp, and have went bottom 13's on stock F70-14's. That's quicker than any stock LS1 I've owned. And my old bird isn't one of the bigger engine muscle cars with more HP either.
You'll see if you visit the site or attend a race most of these pure stockers will run times equal to most new cars today, and do it on reproduction stock type 45 year old rubber.

Need I post videos??

[blackcar]

Need I post videos??

Not that I don't believe you, but yes.

[Firebirdjones]

Here are some ride along videos. This is pure stock. A little backround, only overboring the engine with a slight compression bump is allowed (for obvious reasons, talking 50+ year old engines) otherwise, no porting, stock cams, stock exhaust (no headers allowed) this is really just honing your skills with the car is what it amounts to. These cars are as close to stock as can be and engine tear downs are frequently done to verify they comply with the rules.
Here's an old 63 409, the car the beach boys wrote songs about, running high 12's at 111+ on stock rubber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=BhiVY_qseNM

Some smaller cubes, here's an L79 350 horse running high 12's


Here's another L79, in a vette running bottom 13's


Here's that same L79 vette running a 70 LT1 fbody


How about a studabaker vs an LT1 nova, never thought you'd see that one, lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=-WmF-w6-EkQ

How about getting into the big dawgs. This is one of the slower LS6's in the class running 12.80's, they have dipped into the 12.20's with good air. That's a little 400 cubed RAIV goat in the other lane also running mid 12's.



How about an L88 vette running 11.40's, got dinged for no cage



Many many more, I'll post later, some I'm more familiar with and can give more detail.

[blackcar]

[Firebirdjones]

Here is another L88 vette. This time running a hemi cuda. There are several L88's in the pure stock ranks, they all dip into the 11's, and one also holds the current ET record and has been for 3-4 years now. Also Chevrolet has been top dog at each event every year for the past 7 or 8 years now, again that is done with the L88 vette most times, and a couple times done with a COPO ZL1 427 camaro. Yes there are 3 or 4 of them that compete as well.
Bob driving the hemi in this video goes waaay back to the beginning of muscle car drags when I remember this stuff first starting in the 1980's. He sometimes drives a 69 6-pack super bee that runs mid 12's.



Here's yet another L88. Yes this one is driven by a girl, and her husband Terry drives another L88 vette, both have bounced the record a couple times. That's Bob again in his hemi cuda. Watch this run closely, the vette gets loose out past the 60 foot mark, she drives through it and takes the win. Hard to beat the top end charge of the L88

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=z_HAR0rADLo

Here's one of the ZL1 camaro's that competes, there is at least one other that is blue. Anyway, vette redlights big time, lol.
In case anyone is wondering, yes these reproduction polyglass tires do like big smokey burnouts, they tend to work pretty decent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=O66k_4cXYEU

Here's some for the pontiac fans (Orion )
Here is Bruno's 69 RAIV GTO. This cars been competing a long time. I've lined up against him during time trials. There are about 6 or 7 RAIV cars that compete and Bruno's is the quickest of the bunch, it usually dips into the 12.40's with good air. Bruno's son also runs a RAIV 69 firebird that is quick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=vfyvCnoGvTs

Here is a closer look at Bruno's car. The fact that he can run with what is considered chevys top dog (the LS6) says alot about how good the ole ram air pontiacs run. Dale in the chevelle is a clown and is having fun with his burnout.


I'll give some backround on this since the description is vague. Here is a 68 RAII bird, which is also a round port poncho, the predicessor to the RAIV. Scott Teiman restored this car and is usually the driver, but the car is owned by Rick Mahoney who runs/owns 3-4 different RA birds that I know of. Can't remember the guys name that drives the Challenger but it's a regular, a 440 6-pack car with an automatic that also runs strong, dips into the mid 12's.


Here's the same bird running Bob in his hemi. Yeah those pontiacs run pretty good


Again, best 2 out of 3 is how they run these races, and switch lanes so no advantage... Looks even until the bird has trouble on the big end and shuts down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=S76__r0QuKg

Same bird, not familiar with the drive of this vette but for those that don't know what L89/L71 in the description is, it's a 427/435HP tripower vette with aluminum head option.

[Firebirdjones]

Someone asked for a dyno comparison. Here's one from super chevy that built an LS2 ans stroked it to 400 cubes, and paired it against a gen 1 400 sbc. 15 degree heads on the LS2 as per factory, and 23 degree heads on the gen 1 as per factory. Using all off the shelf parts, same compression, similar cam grinds etc...

Small Block Engine Build And Dyno Test - Chevy High Performance Magazine - View All Page

[Firebirdjones]

A little more Pontiac for you guys. This is a little bit of old and new action for the non believers
Here's my RAIII bird, pale in comparison to the faster running cars above. Sorry no video, I didn't own one at the time. This is an old glossy shot I scanned.
A little backround. This is test and tune, I'm running the stock class making some early morning time runs. Best I can remember this was mid 90's, maybe 96 late in the year. I'm not running polyglass tires here but I have on a set of old daytona radials that mimic the width and diameter of the stock F70-14's for some practice runs.
The guy in the other lane is a friend of a friend (name escapes me) with his brand new (at the time) 96 or maybe 97 LT1 bird. He is also running a procharger on this car, otherwise it's fairly stock, but an easy 100hp boost. It's a 6-speed car and he was vague what else might have been done to it. A little bench racing going on back in the pits, all fun and games and a good time. He wanted to challenge the old bone stock bird. Both of us on street tires so I felt a pretty even match up, lets do it
I put a whoopin on him and he had a new found respect for the classic muscle.

[FasstChevys]

A little more Pontiac for you guys. This is a little bit of old and new action for the non believers
Here's my RAIII bird, pale in comparison to the faster running cars above. Sorry no video, I didn't own one at the time. This is an old glossy shot I scanned.
A little backround. This is test and tune, I'm running the stock class making some early morning time runs. Best I can remember this was mid 90's, maybe 96 late in the year. I'm not running polyglass tires here but I have on a set of old daytona radials that mimic the width and diameter of the stock F70-14's for some practice runs.
The guy in the other lane is a friend of a friend (name escapes me) with his brand new (at the time) 96 or maybe 97 LT1 bird. He is also running a procharger on this car, otherwise it's fairly stock, but an easy 100hp boost. It's a 6-speed car and he was vague what else might have been done to it. A little bench racing going on back in the pits, all fun and games and a good time. He wanted to challenge the old bone stock bird. Both of us on street tires so I felt a pretty even match up, lets do it
I put a whoopin on him and he had a new found respect for the classic muscle.

I had a '94 TA that I put a ProCharger on. It was good for about 100 -125 hp. So, for me, the car was 375 - 400 hp, theoretically. If he spun at all out of the hole with that 6-speed, I can see why you handed him that a$$

[Firebirdjones]

Tires make it an equal race, (to some extent) that's the beauty of the pure stock drags, you have to run stock issue tires. His advantage is of course everyones argument here about better engine, fuel injection, blah blah, not to mention he had a procharger, lol. My only advantage really was the fact that I've been running that old car on stock rubber for 20 years and know exactly what it likes. 1.8x 60 foot times are easy in that car.
My old bird makes 301 rwhp and 355 rwtq, just about the same HP as a stock LS1 will do, but my pontiac is making loads more torque, which is what excelerates the car down track. Hence the reason it runs quite a bit quicker than the stock LS1's I've owned.

[Firebirdjones]

The super duty pontiac was mentioned earlier. There are a handful that compete in pure stock. They are at somewhat of a disadvantage compression wise compared to anything made before 1971 so they don't run as well as some of the other ram air pontiacs do, but they are still very strong runners due to their abundance of torque thanks to a factory (long arm) 4.210 crank. Not bad for stuff coming out in 1973-74 when everything else was considered dead.





Here is a compilation of last years pure stock races if you have the time to watch. At 3 minutes you'll see a 455HO TA, there are a few of these and they all seem to run about the same as the SD TA's (virtually identical engines, different casting numbers) many good match ups with a nice variety. They all run pretty good, some are surprising. Even the little 68 302 Z puts up a respectable time at a little over 14 minutes in. Not bad for a peanut motor, lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=T05xkmioBko

There you go, you can take the big motor/little motor, new or old, and bench race all you want.

[SMWS6TA]

FBJ, you said they have to run stock in those classes, but can they modify the brakes? Some of those came with drums, some on all 4 wheels, no way would I run with drums.

[5.0THIS]

So you posted a bunch of videos of cars that admittedly have motor work done. You can try to excuse it and justify it all you want,. but those engines are blueprinted and modified from factory spec. And on most of those runs we cant see the slow trap speed. We have a lot better chance of seeing truly stock cars in the old reviews. And they were fucking slow. We also don't know any of the other details of any of those cars. Most of those videos you posted are of serious racers who will do anything they can to make those cars faster within a loosely enforced set of rules. Those cars are a far cry from what their average counterpart would have run in stock form.

But if you want to bench race, fine. I've seen a bolt on LT1 firebird dip into the 11s, only making about 320rwhp. I've seen stock LS7 ZO6s run 10s on factory tires. It's also been well documented a handful of stock LS1 cars going 12s @ 110ish mph. Which would beat all but a handful of the most powerful 400+hp cars from the 60s.

Even if you wanted to make an argument that 60s cars can run with modern performance cars (they cant, and it isn't even nearly as close as you're making it out to be), you're ignoring all of the other pieces to the equation, like the fact that the modern cars will run those times for hundreds of thousands of miles with no major work, they'll idle smoothly, emissions are small fraction of their predecessors, etc etc.

It's ok fbj... most of the old guys have a hard time letting go of a bygone era with grossly overrated cars that did nothing well except a handful that were quicker than a modern Toyota Camry in the 1/4 mile.

[Firebirdjones]

They won't allow light weight setups. In other words, if you want to add disc brakes to the front of the car, it has to be a factory setup.
Most of your cars, GM especially, had front disc brakes that came as standard equipment on performance models by the time 1969 rolled around, not all, but most. I could break it all down but it would take a long list since that of course varied from model to model.
Prior to that, alot were 4 wheel drum. Vettes didn't have 4 wheel disc until 1965, and front disc was optional on other GM starting in 67. Too many variables to list though.

Honestly though, if the car came with 4 wheel drum, 99% of these guys prefer to keep it that way. Reason being is that drums offer less rolling resistance, and they are also lighter weight than factory disc brakes. There are upgrades to drums you can make (I've done it to a few of mine) from Muscle Car Brakes. They offer ceramic linings, bigger wheel cylinders for more pressure, and different spring tension setups. Works pretty darn good actually.

Long shut down areas at most tracks don't require alot of brake so that helps.

[Firebirdjones]

Figured a guy like you would try to explain it away but the fact remains, stock for stock, classic stuff is very capable and I think I went above and beyond to show that. The point was made, you choose to ignore it. That's okay. Have fun with your new stuff, just watch out for the old geaser in the other lane, you never know

[5.0THIS]

Figured a guy like you would try to explain it away but the fact remains, stock for stock, classic stuff is very capable and I think I went above and beyond to show that. The point was made, you choose to ignore it. That's okay. Have fun with your new stuff, just watch out for the old geaser in the other lane, you never know

Stock times for those cars weren't impressive. All of the cars you've shown have massaged engines (by your own admission), and are having everything done to make them faster within a series that doesn't have strictly enforced rules (and yes, I've talked to some guys running those cars). The only real basis for comparison we have is what those cars ran back in the day, and those tests sucked.

No doubt you can say there were engines back then that can make more than 350hp (about what a stock LS1 makes). But how much more displacement did they need to do it? How horribly unreliable were they in comparison? How much maintenance did they need in comparison? How were their road manners in comparison? How much did they emission? How long did they last between rebuilds? We wont even mention fuel efficiency

You're smart enough to know that the LS1, at its power level, provides more performance than all but a small handful of engines from the 60s, and does so while winning handily in all of the categories I brought up above. And to be quite honest, if we're magazine racing stock cars, The bone stock LS1 car (that was tested by a Ford magazine no less) outperforms just about anything from the 60s short of a big block vette or a Cobra, both of which had way more power and weighed a lot less.

[GTP231]

Show me all these articles with gen 1 small blocks making similar power. Me and you both know that LS1 heads are 15 degree heads that absolutely crush any factory small block head ever made in the 60s and 70s. The intake, multi port injection design, and computer controlled aspect are all going to lead to an engine that has vastly superior response, refinement, and driveability.

To get an old small block to even come close to competing, you're running aftermarket heads, a bigger cam, more compression, something... Which negates most cost advantages.

If I had to pick a favorite performance engine, no way I'd go anything from the 60s and 70s. I'll stick with the new stuff that's going to ass rape the old stuff every time. Sure you can build any engine to make immense power, but if we're comparing stock for stock engines from different generations it just isn't any contest. I mean have you seen those 1/4 mile times for older cars? It's a joke. Muscle cars were slow as balls. Maybe if you had a 427 vette or a Cobra. Otherwise, a bunch of 13 second monsters running under 105mph with their supposedly 500+hp hemis and LS6s.

You and I

[5.0THIS]

You and I

I'm not fixing that

[pajeff02]

FBJ - great vids! I remember seeing them a couple of years ago when you posted them.

My .02 - old school or new school, they are still both pushrod V8 engines with similar architecture. Throw in a roller cam and port fuel injection on the modern version (with a whole pile of sensors so that it has infinite adjustment for varying conditions) and, as expected, it is a more streetable and better running engine. From a power perspective, sure almost all engines will benefit from a bump in compression, tuning and go fast parts such as heads. The fact is that for not a whole lot of coin, our Corvette (with a set of cast iron Vortec heads, flat top pistons, less compression, and a mild bumpstick) makes the same power as our Trans Am. Stock for stock, sure the LS1 has the advantage with its roller cam, higher compression and better head design. Start throwing $$ and parts at both of them though and you will see fairly identical gains. Only difference is that you will spend a whole lot less money building the snot out of the SBC than the LS1.