Normally Aspirated C7 Z06 Build
Horsepower Research in McKinney, Texas has made quite a name for itself building large displacement late model LS and LT based Chevrolet engines for drag racing, road racing and all around hot street cars. One of their newest builds is a 468 cubic inch C7 Z06 LT engine for a local customer who was dissatisfied with the performance of his Corvette. While fast, the supercharged car created excessive heat when run hard at the track. He didn't like that and asked the Horsepower guys to find a solution.
After investigating various cooling upgrades they decided to pursue a different path by completely replacing the supercharged engine with a big cubic inch normally aspirated engine capable of meeting or exceeding the output of the factory powerplant. The existing engine was removed and saved for another project and the team proceeded to engineer a normally aspirated 468 cubic inch engine designed to exceed the power of the supercharged engine while handily removing weight from the front of the car.
The core structure of this engine is a new GM Gen V LT1/LT4 cylinder block both of which share the same part number. As seen here, the new LT block is immediately machined to accept large bore Darton sleeves which permit a larger 4.185-inch bore and longer cylinders to accommodate the increased stroke.
The GEN V world suffers from a lack of good performance cylinder heads. LT1 and LT4 heads have huge ports that flow a lot of air if required. But they also diminish performance in the low and mid RPM ranges where most of these cars live on the street. However, the Competition Induction Design (CID) LT casting provides very small ports so a head porter can design and tweak everything from valve size to port design and location. HPR works closely with cylinder head porter Greg Good who has developed one of, if not the very best set of ports for direct injection heads.




SOURCE
Horsepower Research, HPR
401 Power House St, Suite 104
McKinney, TX 75071
972 597-4367
e-mail sales@horsepower-research.com
https://horsepower-research.com
GSpeed
215 Performance Ct
Cresson, TX 76035
877-512-5180
email sales@gspeed.com
https://gspeed.com