5.3 LS vs 454 BBC

all right today guys we're going to be talking about the big block 454 versus the 5.3 liter ls whether you want your car to sound like this or if you want your car to sound like this so let's jump right into it [Music] okay first off i want to start off by saying i'm comparing the 5.3 liter ls to the big block 454 simply because those are the most readily available engines that you can get from a wrecking urine that make a good amount of power now there is a six liter ls but i'm not comparing it directly to that because i've personally never found a six liter ls just sitting at a wrecking yard i generally consider these engines more along the lines of probably the 1500 mark if you're going to go out and try and find one on your local craigslist because i personally have never seen one at a local wrecking yard so i'm comparing the more modest 5.3 to the big block 454 for that reason and that reason alone because it's not as obtainable both these engines are very obtainable from a wrecking yard standpoint and very easy to get home and get in your car so what i'm actually going to go ahead and do here is make a checklist of subjects that both of these engines excel at and this will maybe hopefully help you decide on exactly what engine you're going to want to go with [Applause] so the first subject is modability and from audibility honestly both engines excel very well at this there's over 2000 horsepower ls's and there's over 4000 horsepower big block chevys both these engines you go straight to your summit or jegs catalog have parts pretty much to ship to you next day and you'll be making power you can buy heads cams intakes all this stuff from summit jegs pretty much anywhere and you'll have the power to your door in just a few days so for this i'm actually going to give the big block and the ls both the win in this category the mod ability of these engines are crazy you can have superchargers turbos pro chargers you can do pretty much whatever you want to these engines and it's only a click away and a drained bank account away but you can do it to both these engines so the next subject i actually want to jump over to is power that's probably one of the bigger reasons you're actually watching this video the 5.3 liter ls can make a tremendous amount of power with just headers and a cam and pretty much that's that's all you're gonna have to do to make a substantial amount of power to go get out and have some fun because with with the 5.3 liter if you cam it right and you put the correct set of headers on it you're probably going to be able to make around the 450 horsepower mark to the crank of course but the 450 horsepower mark with just those two modifications of course the tune is in line but with just those two modifications you're going to be able to make around 450 horsepower jump over to getting cylinder heads you're probably going to be able to crank that up to the 500 horsepower mark and you don't see that big of a jump in it in power when it comes to naturally aspirated ls engines with a better cylinder head and that's just simply because the stock cylinder heads on ls engines are awesome they flow amazingly and realistically if your budget doesn't allow it you're not skipping too much by not getting a different set of heads now let's get on to the big block so when it comes to the big block 454 there's a few different variations of big block 454s out there this is gen 4 gen 5 and gen 6. so the gen 5 you're pretty much going to want to avoid it's a little bit of a hassle getting the correct head gasket if you ever want to install aftermarket heads however i will say this the gen 5 big blocks do have four bolt mains automatically pretty much every gen or i should say every gen five big block does have four volt mains so that's an added bonus but you will have to source your head head gaskets accordingly and make sure that you put gen 4 heads on it because the gen 5s have peanut port heads and some of the later gen 4's do have peanut butter heads what you're going to want to be looking for is actually the oval port casting heads and i'll show you a different the difference here it's actually pretty incredible the oval port castings flow a lot more air and they're just stock jam cylinder heads so those are the castings that you're going to want to be looking for when you're out on a budget looking for an engine from a wrecking yard now let's talk about some of the things you can do to them to make power heads cam intake pretty much the stock heads are gonna be able to flow very well i will say that right off the bat right off the bat you can make probably around the 500 horsepower mark with the intake headers and camshaft now i will say the ls intake does flow better than a stock 454 intake and generally when you're talking about big blocks the intake is going to be the first thing to go another thing to look out for on these big blocks is when you're looking at a gen 6 big block that's generally the one that you're going to want to find it's code name l29 and what those engines have over the previous uh iterations of big block chevys is a little bit more compression if you're going to the wrecking yard and you see say a 96 to i think 2 000 i'll correct that if i'm wrong but if you see a 96 to 2 000 suburban or something like that with a big block in it you're going to generally want to go ahead and gravitate towards that because with that l29 big block you're going to have a little bit more compression nine i believe it's nine to one nine to one compression so you're going to have a little bit more compression to work with it also comes with forged internals and this is a big thing if you're ever wanting to make a lot more power by adding boost or nitrous or something along those lines however i will say this the gen 4 big blocks do work great and i have one of my gmc out there 454 gmc even has pina port heads but it still moves for what it is so you make a little bit more power with the big block than you will the ls i will say that right off the bat it with the added displacement you're going to make a little bit more power not to mention when you get over to heads heads are honestly a huge thing on big blocks even though the stock castings flow well it's a monstrous engine to be flowing air through and when you have the right combination for example the l29 with a set of afr oval port heads you can make around the 600 horsepower mark on nine to one compression and that's a stock block naturally aspirated 600 horsepower and that's going to scoot anything down the street very well now let's get over to reliability so reliability with the ls engine is absolutely phenomenal you'll never hear anybody complain about the reliability on an ls engine if you go back and look at for example cletus mcfarlane's youtube channel you'll see motion raceworks put an ls in their g-body burnout car that had 622 000 miles on it and they chose to blow that up by holding it off of rev limiter for several minutes before it actually finally gave up that's with think about it 622 000 miles on stock cam bearing stock main bearing stop rod bearings it did it with stock bearings and that's absolutely insane to me and as far as i know there's not really many engines that are going to be able to touch the reliability of that except for maybe a say a diesel or something along those lines now if we talk about the big block in these terms i will say the big block has a much shorter life expectancy in my personal opinion usually these are around 200 to 250 000 mile engines somewhere in that realm then you're probably going to be wanting to look at a rebuild basically the ls is going to win this one hands down so let's get on over to street friendliness the ls engine is going to win this one hands down and i will say this because you can go out and start your ls engine and pretty much instantly have it fire up granted because it has a stock fuel injection system with that stock fuel injection system there's no pump in the gas you know there's no choke it just runs idles warms up and you have a good time and i can't say that much for the big block unless you go over to like say a sniper efi setup on a big block but i will say that they are not cheap you're looking around 13 1400 bucks for a sniper kit and that is going to be a huge factor for a lot of people because most people are going to pretty much just put a carburetor on a big block and that's just the fact of it most people are going to be putting a carburetor on a big block and it's not going to be as friendly for example on cold starts anything of that store not to mention the big block is probably going to get less than half of the mileage than an ls engine is going to get when you're trying to say drive to work or whatnot i will say my 456 geared gmc truck with no overdrive and a 454 gets about six and a half miles per gallon and that is with a sniper efi kit so that's a big factor for a lot of you guys if you're trying to drive this thing all the time an ls engine is definitely going to be the one for you because let's be honest that little bit of power is not really worth having to you know break your bank account for trying to just drive to work so the next topic i will actually want to touch up on this is price to modify those engines so if you're looking to make a little bit more power the ls engine is actually really cheap to modify but i don't think it's quite as cheap as the big block chevy and when i say this generally parts for the big block chevy are a few hundred dollars cheaper on average for the basically anything you're gonna do and i'm excluding going to really high-end stuff because then factors change a little bit but for the average joe if you go out and you say want to put a intake headers cam on your big block chevy intakes are generally a few hundred dollars cheaper headers are generally a few hundred dollars cheaper and cams are generally a few hundred dollars cheaper and now all of that does add up they're both pretty cheap to modify but i'm gonna have to give this one to the big block chevy for the average joe they're gonna be able to make more power on the cheap than an ls engine and the second to last factor here is actually going to be weight now when it comes to a fully loaded big block chevy if it doesn't have aluminum heads you're looking around the 650 pound mark or so for a big block and let's be honest that is a huge one because if you're planning to make your car for example a pro touring application something along those lines the big block chevy is going to add a lot of nose weight to that car and it's not going to handle as well as say something with an ls that generally weighs around the 400 pound mark now the power that you can have from an l or from a big block chevy over an ls will generally outweigh that however but if as i said this is like a drag strip kind of orientation where that power versus weight ratio is going to come into effect if you put in a pro touring car those few hundred pounds there are probably going to make a huge difference and you're not going to be able to keep up with the competition with that much nose weight unless you go to say aluminum heads and just do some serious weight saving you can get an aluminum block big block chevy however that is not even within my budget by any means it's not cheap so the ls does win this one as well so the last topic on this list is going to be cool factor now i'm giving this one the big block chevy because when you pop the hood to an ls engine you're going to spend a lot of money trying to make it look anywhere near as clean or cool as a big block there's also nothing like a solid lift or big block chevy screaming down the drag strip at 8 000 rpms nothing cooler than that seeing it just blow the doors off of another car honestly when it comes down to this a lot of people are going to have a different opinion but to me the rawness of a big block gives it that much more cool factor and it keeps a little bit more old school so let's get back to it who won this now granted there's a lot of different things that to take into consideration when you're going out trying to find an engine for your vehicle and first category that we went over was mod ability i gave this one to both the big block and the ls so we're going to put a check next to the big block and a check next to the ls power the big block chevy is going to make a little bit more power in stock form just with a basically a top end kit so i'm going to give this one to the big block chevy [Music] reliability this was a big one and of course this is going to be huge one for a lot of people that want to drive their car pretty much every day so this is going to be a check mark for the ls [Music] street friendliness another check mark for the ls because these basically just turn key ready to go pretty much any time that you want no matter the weather you're going to turn the key it's going to idle warm up you're going to be out be able to go out and have a blast without a headache pretty much so check mark for the ls on that one [Music] now price to modify this one i gave it to the big block chevy because this is a little bit cheaper to actually modify a big block for the same amount of power when you're considering just taking engines from the wrecking yard and putting a top end kit on them the big block chevy is going to keep a little bit more money in your bank account for this so for this i give this a check mark on the big block chevy wait now this is another huge one as i was saying for anybody trying to make an autocross car pro touring anything like that something is supposed to handle really well and weight is a huge factor it's even a huge factor in drag racing so if you're going to be making a big block chevy instead of an ls you better make sure that big block chevy makes more power than that ls if you're going down the drag strip because you're risking about 200 pounds there so 200 pounds definitely is going to give the win to the ls on that so check mark for the ls [Music] cool factor now this is an opinion pretty much just on my end so for me as i said it's going to be the big block chevy so check mark on that so in this terms we do have kind of a tie both these engines are very good at doing what they do now whether it be going to the drag strip or driving it every day it's going to be up to you pretty much to decide exactly what you want to do with either of these engines and go from there if you're looking for high horsepower loud you know go with the big block if you're looking for still high horsepower and reliability and stuff pretty much what people want to be able to drive their car more often you're going to want to go with the ls but regardless just go out get at it go get a wrecking yard engine go out and have some fun these are very cheap platforms nowadays and that's all i want to say it's important to go out and just have some fun with whatever you have don't need to break the bank to get down the road so you know what hope you guys like this video don't forget to comment like and subscribe there's going to be more coming out as you can see still stuff in the background we have stuff to work on so anyways you guys have a great day

Channel: RatMaro

Views: 13,747

Rating: 4.8661089 out of 5

Keywords: 5.3, 5.3 LS, 454, Big Block Chevy, Big block vs LS, Big block, BBC, Junkyard LS, Junkyard big block, 5.3L, 427, LS7, LS1, LS3, LS, Small block, Junkyard engine, Hotrod, 6.0 LS, LQ4, LQ9

Id: dwxCNagW2es

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020