"Four or five hundred horsepower is easy; you only need to do a few things to the motor," Golen tells us. "You need to port the stock heads, but you can keep the stock intake, run a 52- or 55mm throttle body, 30 lb/hr injectors, add headers and exhaust, and reprogram the ECM."
Mark McKeown has been working on a custom centrifugal supercharged application, and naturally aspirated his 8.5:1 engine is pulling 515 hp on the dyno. This is possible through careful selection of all the components. "You need to look at the engine as a whole," he says. "By maximizing efficiency, you make sure that every molecule of gasoline reacts with every molecule of oxygen during the combustion process. Nothing is wasted. We match the intake to a good set of heads with back-cut valves and a good valve job." He expects to make an easy 600 hp from the engine once the blower is on.
Karl Ellwein started out as an Impala SS owner, saying, "I just liked the looks of the car." He bought one and began modifying it and started making big power, too. Soon other Impala and 9C1 Caprice owners were asking him to build engines for them as well, so he opened a business building engines. "Guys are buying ex-police cars at auctions for cheap and racing them," he tells us. A popular customer request is for a 355-inch package that adds Mahle pistons and Scat rods to the stock crank. This $2,400 budget rebuild is a good starting point for the high-mileage, ex-cop cars. Ellwein will also build a $12,000 one-off boosted and juiced race engine. He said he has enough work to keep himself busy for several months, and he's actually been turning customers away.
To Build Or Not To Build
Should anyone build this engine? That's a tough call. The LT1 has a number of glaring strikes against it. Its run was short and its major parts don't interchange with the original small-block. The prices of used or salvage LS1s are dropping, and those engines make more power than LT1s do. All our builders agree that the LT1 isn't obsolete, however. Chad Golen says most of his customers are current LT1 owners rather than swappers. "There will always be the guy who wants to keep the engine that originally came in his car," he tells us. Mark McKeown says that the LT1 is a popular swap for the street rodder guys who want a different look for their fiberglass-bodied deuces, but it would also make a good swap candidate into older musclecars because of its affordability and tunability. The other builders agree. "They use the same oil pan and mounts. They fall right into place," Golen says. "But you get a much more modern engine with a lot of tuning potential."
Another interesting point that all the builders mentioned was that LT1s are good-looking engines. Not that aesthetics should rate high on our list of criteria when putting an engine together, but the point is still valid. Thanks to its low-profile, tunnel-ram-style intake and front-mount distributor, it is a very clean install into an older car. "They're not as difficult to wire up as people might think, either," continues Golen. "You can buy a premade wiring harness, and there aren't that many sensors to hook up-throttle-position sensor, idle air control, mass airflow, MAP, two oxygen sensors, two knock sensors. Plug in the fuel injectors, distributor, and the ECM, and you're ready to go."
Street & Performance's Mark Campbell offers a dissenting voice, however. "They're not the newest technology," he says, pointing out that if you want a fuel-injected musclecar, it makes more sense to do a Gen III swap. "The engines are becoming more affordable, and the aftermarket support is booming." Campbell's company specializes in engine swaps and makes and sells a dizzying variety of adapters, modified oil pans, motor-mount kits, and wiring harnesses. He goes on to say, "They're good engines, but parts are going to be more difficult to find. And you're still running old technology under the hood. I think the better swap candidate is the Gen III engine."