1982 LS Powered DeLorean DMC-12: Regular Car Reviews

and on the sixth day God said let there be a less and it was good I will sing and I will win let us begin this DeLorean is a January 1982 build VIN number one one four zero eight it's a DeLorean with an LS motor yes this swap what about an LS DeLorean it's a comment that appears in many message boards and on Reddit and YouTube comments people complain about the original engine the PRV v6 well what about an LS well here it is here is a DeLorean with a General Motors LS v8 what is there left for myself and the Roman to say about DeLoreans we've now driven two and this DeLorean will complete our own trilogy we drove an automatic one that was almost a daily driver we drove Matt Farah's beautifully rebuilt stage to DeLorean and now we have this so our opinions have changed from when we reviewed that first to Lord and fell to our knees and deemed we weren't worthy and you can watch the original video of us seeing a DeLorean for the first time right here that was way the hell back in season two nearly three years ago and since then we've driven a ton of unique cars which we never thought we'd have the chance to look at much less actually drive it isn't that our reverence as any less than it was now but we're in a greater position to look at the DeLorean objectively free from any semen covered glasses of nostalgia so of course Matt Farah's DeLorean was as good as a DeLorean can be and still be period-correct and you can watch that video here but one thing always remained and it always bugged me the DeLorean never went it never accelerated it never had the speed I thought it had when I watched the movies when I was a kid but this this does an LS DeLorean goes like I wanted a DeLorean to go and it sounds the way I thought it would sound yay oh my goodness this is fast yes the ls solves all problems but what you want to know is how on earth do you do this how do you fit an LS into a DeLorean the type of motor this car was never meant to have so I'm gonna shut up now and allow John to explain himself how on earth do you build this take it away John yes that may fall on you at any point in time basically LS swap DeLorean there's a gentleman down in he was in Ohio moved down to Florida he helped me out a lot with the swap actually but everyone kind of has their own take on it so the internet roses an LS for it's a they reached in front-wheel drive cars so the Impala SS Monte Carlo SS the Grand Prix whatever sporty addition and those here transverse-mounted they were transverse-mounted so like a bunch of and they made turbo kits for these cars and everything yeah so like just gobs of power at the front wheels on this a really heavy car did you have to then get did they use a different sort of gearbox it for the fun did you have to choose a different one it well it's a it's still front-wheel drive transmission and I think they used it in the past on some V sixes so this this doesn't have the standard you know way back in the day they're still using it today Chevy Volt power and you know that you could both same transmission up to so it's a little bit different except I don't care because I had to make an adapter plate why'd you have to make an adapter plate so because I'm mounting the Renault UN one which is a French gearbox which has no business being behind any sort of American engine oh wait this still has the original gearbox enter yes I'm gonna stop the video right here but let me repeat what John just said this LS four is connected to the r''l un1 yes the Renault u n one was an okay gearbox it it when it was used in the Lotus Esprit v8 but that 9:18 twin-turbo v8 was nerfed to stop the UN one from shattering like the frozen t1000 at the end of Terminator 2 the renault un one was made for high horsepower but low torque motors the type of motors that would go into little limey be road to cedars not an LS not the LS when the General Motors LS v8 descended from Mount Olive in 1997 with an aluminum dick and a Sid Vicious sneer the world did yay and look up here was a pushrod motor that Rev just as fast and just as hard as your holier-than-thou double overhead cam motors like the BMW S 62 v8 er your precious 1 J or 2 jay-z novel gobber's and because the LS is a cam in block the motors outer dimensions remain small and then GM cranked out these motors like pop-tarts high volume prices met the prices stay low just like the Miata and no no overhead cam doesn't need it no variable valve timing at least in the beginning it doesn't need it the stock headers flow better than fancy aftermarket chrome trash no twin spark setup burns fine with just one plug per pot two valves per cylinder doesn't need four remember the movie primer where they're building the box and the two guys go over to the design and they keep eliminating parts like well it doesn't need this and it can go without this that's the that's the LS make it as simple as you can anything that doesn't need it doesn't have that's the brilliance of this design josh's renault un1 gearbox hasn't broken yet he drove this car he drove this LS DeLorean coupled to the Renault UN gearbox from Saskatchewan all the way to Hamburg Pennsylvania no problems not one anyway back to Josh so you got all this power going through here new care box yes it's beefed up as much as it can be yeah they're the input shaft comes in and it's in two pieces and there's I'd call it like a mechanical fuse it's just kind of a female splined like this is the inside of the transmission so that that's what goes with the spline strip out at about almost a 215 pound feet of torque okay so and then the automatics a whole nother story like I could put an arm iMac behind this and just pop them off you know just destroy them one after another so you had a lot of you had some clearance issues to solve yes business with the water pump down there there's a few reasons why I kind of pushed it back because if I were to install this engine with the transmission and the stock location it would be three inches closer to the rear and basically hanging out of the back of the car so moving it forward that kind of helps getting the weight a little bit closer because the weight distribution is terrible on these cars and it gives me more room in the front so if I want to do like exhaust like you're right in front there because this exhaust is freakin noisy on the highway right right now you're running very tiny glass packs yes the smallest ones I can get the headers what are the headers I just made them Oh engine five-eighths pipe you just get the I got the long tube header kit from Summit and and kind of figured out you know there's the there's the head and I kind of mounted the flange where I wanted to do me and go away to be and now you can just see that it just starts there ends there yeah well and and this is kind of a unique header because they always exit you know that they always make a turn right they don't come straight out the side and then they're shifted too far forward or too far back and run to the frame so I heard of easiest just to make my own had to make all new engine mounts before this whole project I spent it must have been like a week straight and I basically measured everything that like the whole rear portion of the frame and put it all in CAD because it was it was getting pretty cold yeah and then there's a gentleman I don't know where he's from but he took the time tomorrow in LS engine so that helped out a lot and I measured out the transmission and then just kind of made everything work so that all of the mounts and stuff those are all laser-cut parts that I had welded together so if someone wanted mounts again in the adapter plate and stuff like that I could replicate it I haven't found anyone serious enough everyone wants to oh I want to LS swap my DeLorean can you give me a kit no it doesn't work that way if they add do you still have the files oh absolutely yeah I could I could replicate this for sure because I am an engineer by trade so working as CAD is something I do every day the suspension is all stock really I should be upgrading the brakes I haven't yeah you got like a coating on as far as cooling you have a much bigger motor there yes what was your coolant well and another reason why I picked this engine is aluminum block so you're gonna have better cooling and it's also under 100 pounds lighter than iron block LS I ran it with the stock DeLorean hold all the cooling sapless stock and I ran into issues if I was at a stoplight for two minutes yeah the fans would kick on and then the temperature would keep rising and if I were in like this traffic that experienced and I'm down the states the this thing we've overheated many times over so this last winter I had it down it's got I put aluminum radiator it and I draw my temperature significantly I wanted to run around the junkyard and I looked for the biggest fans I could and they're off like a 2000 Malibu or something there's a 13-inch fan and the rads actually only 12 inches tall so it's like it covers everything and then some so oh right no okay so there's the rad mm-hm and it's kind of one mounted on an angle because up there's that the bottom of the trunk and then the fans are down there yeah there's not a whole ton of room in there this one's measured I think it's 323 other flywheel horsepower and similar torque so I have much better exhaust and a much better intake so I don't all say conservatively 350 okay and maybe 300 to the ground I would hope it's north of 300 that would be disappointing if it was near 200 I call my Apple Hill all the solution time to drive it I love it oh this is what I wanted and this is what you wanted since it has stock brakes you need to allow time for this now missile to stop and also because it has stock suspension the front of the car gets light really easy so when you do gently get on the power the nose will lift and it feels like you're going even faster and because you have the unstoppable LS you can pass anybody at any time and especially people in the know they go harder to think DeLoreans were that fast and you go ball right by him but you do drive josh's DeLorean with a little bit of fear and respect because you don't want to break it now he tells me he beefed up the transmission but I'm not sure exactly what that means and he was very concerned when I was driving it because he said whatever you do don't hammer it in fifth gear when you're on the highway don't do a hard pull for ten there's an egg under that accelerator pedal at all times even though that was there and even though we kept a very mild foot because of the un1 gearbox this was now the best DeLorean I have ever driven the interior was very it wasn't that great but then again you appreciate a DeLorean more from the outside than from the inside I had nothing to fear from the motor I had all the power I could ever need and I had all the reliability I could ever want I'm sure Josh will eventually come up with a long-term solution for the gearbox mismatch but he is almost there once that's finished this will be the pinnacle deny on summit beautiful DeLorean that shall exist for ages this is what all men strive for and this is what all nerds want the LS DeLorean by my deeds I honor him the eighth [Music] DeLorean now we are with our review just call me Morpheus what would you do if I told you this metamorphosis could start again with the brand of DeLoreans is this the end tell me my friend

Channel: Regular Car Reviews

Views: 1,509,116

Keywords: DeLorean, LS Swap Delorean, LS swapping a delorean, LS Swap, DeLorean V8, Regular Car Reviews, PRV V6, UN1

Id: C7f9eZCQc4M

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2016