GM LS - What makes it GREAT? ICONIC ENGINES #12

in the red white and blue corner we have the heavyweight champion of the world that isn't so heavy at all the pride and joy of General Motors the pushrod pumping tire shredding blue-collar torque monster from Motor City USA it's the one the only the GM LS engine in 1676 Sir Isaac Newton wrote this in one of his letters he said if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants implying that his amazing achievements and discoveries in the field of physics were only made possible by the work and achievements of the great scientists and thinkers that came before him if there was ever an engine that this quote apply to it's definitely the GM LS engine because the GM LS engine is the direct descendant and the modernized and improved version of one of the most relevant recognizable and influential engine designs of all time an engine that was manufactured for half a century an engine that raised many many generations of car enthusiasts of course I'm talking about the timeless Chevrolet small-block engine now before we proceed further there's something we have to get out of the way and that's that officially the term LS engine family doesn't exist what officially exists within GM is the generation three and generation four of the GM small-block v8 engine platform generation one being the original Chevy small-block generation to being the LT one and LT four engines and generation three in generation for being a whole bunch of different engines many of which do not even have LS in their names but today when we say our Senden family in most cases we mean all the engines within general three and four so with that in mind let's get back to history now the original small-block Chevy the generation 1 engine was a class leader in many aspects and this explains why it stayed on the market for so long it was introduced in 1955 but it was relevant all up until the 90s I mean very few engines on the planet can boast of such a track record however by the 90s the small bark Chevy design was starting to show its age and this engine started to struggle to meet emissions mpg and weight requirements so Chevy improved the engine they introduced generation to the LT 1 and LT 4 but both of these engines were largely based on the small box Chevy and weren't much of an improvement some would even say they were a step back and these engines continued to struggle to meet emissions mpg and weight requirements so by the mid 90s Chevy realized GM actually realized that it was time for a clean sheet design a brand new v8 as you probably know the generation 1 and generation 2 v8 small-block engines are all pushrod engines as opposed to a overhead camshaft engine design that has the camshaft sitting on top of the valves a push on engine has the camshaft inside the block and it relies on a bunch of rods that it pushes up and down to open and close the valves but even in the early 90s the push rod was considered a dinosaur and arcade design that didn't have much of a future and this feeling was present even in GM in fact one of the key engineers on the GM LS development team mr. Ron Sperry recalls that when he was called into HQ to work on a brand new v8 and when he was told and had a cam in the block he thought he did something wrong and that his career was over mr. Ron Sperry taught that because all the key engineers in GM in the 90s were saying v6 this and in mind for that and Jim was also considering whether or not to jump on to bandwagon because most of the world's car manufacturers had already moved on to overhead camshaft designs or were phasing out their pushrod engines but GM wasn't quite ready to give up their push rod just yet so to decide the future of their brand new v8 Jian carried out some pretty sneaky blind testing on their own executives now the blind testing was carried in May of 1992 they put in the secretive GN Milford proving grounds outside of Detroit Michigan and this is how the testing went basically GM gathered up a whole bunch of different executive managers and other GM leaders and they were given pairs of cars to drive the two cars in the pair were pretty much identical from the exterior and interior but what the executives weren't told that each of the cars had a different engine but most interesting pair of cars were two black Corvettes at the end of the line one of them had an LT 4 engine in it a pushrod v8 the other one had a non push rod v8 in it an all-aluminum dual overhead cam engine designed by lotus also known as the LT 5 engine the executives drove both of the vets backed back without knowing which one had which engine by the end of the day after all the executives had driven both of the cars pretty much all of them reached the same conclusion they preferred the pushrod Vette they couldn't get over the fact how instantly the pushrod Vette started pulling hard as soon as they stepped on the gas on the other hand they sort of complained how the out of it took some time to wind up I mean you got all of Americans who cares about high rpm limits and engine Rev happiness I judge my car by how fast it pushes me onto the seat after I step on it and this test might have been a bit biased because pretty much all the test subjects were Americans on the other hand it was also a good test because the test subjects were also the target audience but what's important is that the test decided the future of the v8 the pushrod was here to stay no jumping onto the bandwagon would occur and all this thanks to a bunch of blind testing of a bunch of managers but thanks to this today we have the engine marvel that is the GM LS we have this engine in its beautiful simplicity instead of in a much more complicated and perhaps less successful package but what's another key thing that happened right after the blind testing is the GM appointed the right person for the job so instead of importing some sort of golden boy from I don't know the UK at OE or Germany or whatever to design an overly complex engine did great on paper we have did something totally different they appointed mr. ed Werner as the chief engineer and here's what's important about mr. Koerner he isn't a person that sees cars and engines as a ticket to a paycheck for him cars and engines are a passion because mr. ed corner is an actual car enthusiast and not just a car enthusiast he's a veteran drag racer holder so if you want that engine that's gonna be loved by petrol heads throughout the ages you better get a petrol head to design it and that's exactly what GM did and here's exhibit a that proves that GM LS was designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts so this is the bell housing pattern of the LS engine why am I even showing you this who cares about this but actually you do care and it is important because this thing is one of these single most important reasons why the LS and you became so popular and the bell housing pattern of the LS is the same basic bell housing pattern as the one on the small-block Chevy so what does that mean it means that the LS is compatible with all the older transmissions that came on the Chevrolet small-block and it means that swapping an LS into all the old cool chassis is made really easy and really straightforward for enthusiasts GM really had nothing to gain from this other than making swaps easy for enthusiasts and here we have Exhibit B these are the lifter guides of the LS engine and there are another part of the engine designed to make life easier for enthusiasts now the GM LS engine is a constrained design and that means that in theory when you want to swap cams you have to remove the heads of the engine and that's a lot of work and nobody wants to do that but the designers of the engine realized that enthusiasts would be swapping cams often so they decided to make life easier for them the guides work by catching the lifters in the up position all you gotta do is remove rocker arm mode from the lifters and turn the engine over a few times and the lifter guides are gonna catch though after in the up position making it possible to swap the can without removing the heads and this proves that the LS engine was designed with enthusiasts needs in mind this is extremely beautiful and extremely extremely rare in the world of modern engines but what happens when you hire a drag racer to design your engine but the credit can't go to mr. Koerner alone because the team of engineers that he assembled was a real list of who's who when it comes to incredible experience in all aspects of engine design and it included names like Allen Heyman Jim Missoula Ron Sperry Bill Compton Brian Kaminski John Lewis Stan Turek and many had a really really good engine designers so there was really no wonder that the GM LS turned out as well as it did the LS engine premiered in the form of the ls1 in the engine bay of the c5 Corvette in 1997 and right after its launch it made a huge impact because in the same year the ls1 the words engine of the Year award ed corner received the award on behalf of the entire design team and he remembers that all the designers and himself included couldn't believe that a brand-new pushrod engine won the award but even Ward couldn't ignore the beautiful simplicity and the genius design of the LS engine in the following years the Ellis family also spawned a bunch of different truck engines such as the LRD LM DIY LC and L Q some of which actually make very good starting points for different kinds of projects generation four appears in 2005 and it further perfected the amazing LS formula by improving the designs of the intake and the exhaust manifold and a bunch of other little things it also introduced bigger bore sizes and brought new technologies to the table such as displacement on demand and variable valve timing 2006 saw the introduction of the 0-6 c6 Corvette and along with it the 708 of 505 horsepower and a7 behemoths engine it was followed up shortly after by what is probably the most common choice for swaps today 6.2 liter ls3 engine after that we had the horsepower monsters the supercharged LS and Ellis a engines in 2014 the new generation c7 Corvette was released with a brand new lt1 engine which signaled the unfortunate yet inevitable phasing out of the LS however the LS will survive for an additional three years in trucks and full-sized vans of G M an T was finally over for the LS in 2017 LS engines range in displacement from 4.8 to massive 700 meters so they're pretty big v8 engines but the cool thing is that although they're big in displacement they aren't big in physical size because of their push rod design they do not have the amount of parts and size and complexity typically associated with dual overhead camshaft engines so an LS is almost always going to be smaller than any dual overhead camshaft v8 engine and this is great because it means they can fit pretty much everywhere they're small physical size is one of the reasons why the LS became such a popular swap the engine block has the cylinder banks opposed at a 90 degree angle and it comes in both iron and aluminum which is really nice because when building an LS engine you get to choose between an iron and as a woman in black you want obscene amounts of boost you can go with an iron block you want a lighter engine for a lightweight racing car you can use an aluminum block all the cars that came with an LS engine had a woman box and almost all the trucks had iron blocks except some of the newer trucks which also received a woman and blacks but do not be deceived the aluminum block isn't significantly weaker than the iron block when it comes to the LS the aluminum blocks are really really strong as well and they can take really high amounts of boost and this is because the design of the LS block is really good and really stiff as opposed to the earlier versions the generation 1 integration 2 engines generation three and generation four LS engines have a y-shaped block this means it's a v8 block with a very deep skirt and this is great because it allowed engineers to design six boat cross bolted main bearing caps you have four bolts located vertically and two bolts located horizontally that bolt the main bearing cap from the sides of the block and this makes the main bearing area extremely strong in addition to this the block was designed to accommodate very long head bolts this increased and improved clamping forces and minimize potential cylinder bore Distortion when it comes to the internals we have a knowledge or ayran cast crankshaft and pretty much all of the OS engines except in the supercharged LSA and ls9 engines which employ a forged steel crankshaft like in all real muscle car engines the crankshaft is of course a fake cross plane design and it's responsible for the cool Baroni soundtrack of the LS the connecting rods are forged powdered metal with fractured caps the fracture caps are good because they prevent the rod cap from moving or slipping during high loads however there is a disadvantage because you cannot rebuild fractured cap rods by resizing them also the rods in the LS aren't really famous for being incredibly strong so if you're interested in significantly increasing the power of the LS engine it's often a good idea to wave goodbye to the stark rods and get some aftermarket forged ones an exception to the powdered metal rods is the LS 7 engine it has some very fancy and exotic titanium rods in fact it was the first u.s. made mass produced engine to employ titanium rods and while they're lighter weight might make them seem like a really good choice to swap into a different LS engine you really can't use the LS 7 titanium rods in any other LS without having some custom Pistons speaking of the Pistons all the Pistons in all the LS engines are cast except on the supercharged LS 9 where they have forge when it comes to the cylinder heads all of them are made from aluminum with one exception the lq4 truck engine which used ayran heads but this engine was phased out by year 2000 and after 2000 all our engines use aluminum cylinder heads as we know the OS is a pushrod engine which means that we have some push rods some rocker arms and some hydraulic roller lifters working together to open and close the valves we have two valves per cylinder for a total of 16 valves for the entire engine the generation 3 & 4 LS engines managed to improve upon the design of the generation 1 & 2 small box by using a larger camshaft journal this not only increased strength but also improved valve train dynamics when it comes to the camshaft profiles and duration and know if there's a very wide variety of different profiles across the different LS engines and listing all of them here and talking about all of them would make this a 3-hour video so we won't do that but what I will tell you is that there's good news and you can swap camshafts between the different LS engines for example you can use the high lift hydration cams from the LS 7 and swap them to a different LS engine but be warned in many cases you also need to swap the cam sensor as well as the timing gear to make things work when it comes on intake ports we have different intake port shapes and design between different LS engines and here you can see the intake ports as well as the engines in which they come in [Music] honestly talking about juni vos is a tiny bit redundant you could sum up the whole tuning thing into one sentence whatever you want to do you can do it and you could sum it all up into that one sentence because DLS pretty much has it all it has a strong stock block as we have already mentioned it's very stiff and very strong from the factory it's ready for huge amounts amounts of power it's ready for boost it's ready for nitrous it's ready for whatever you want anyway and even if you run out of performance with the stock block which is honestly not easy to do there's aftermarket blocks available ones with a real main bearing oiling priority that means the oil domains before the valvetrain which is pretty cool for very high performance applications so you can you have a whole market of different types of Ellis blocks to choose from the heads fall a lot of air even in stock form the LS is often credited for being absolutely incredible when it comes to air flow for a two valve pushrod engine and even the stock ls3 heads for example can flow around three hundred CFM that's their peak flow and that's pretty incredible that means you have more than enough air flow to support all sorts of mods and even if you run out of air flow you can port the heads or you can choose from a whole wide variety of different aftermarket castings and different types of CNC porting so whatever you may need it's there in the aftermarket in addition to this the LS was produced for a pretty long time twenty years in fact and was made in very large numbers in many many different vehicles and this means that the LS is easy to source it's readily available on top of that pretty much any machine shop is familiar with the LS so it's easy to rebuild it but let's say that you do not want to source it you do not want to mess with rebuilds there's a solution for that as well GM offers ready-made assembled to spec perfect great engines from GM themselves and you just got go there pay take the engine and install the engine and you're done no rebuilding or any of that mess and when you look at the prices of these engines honestly they're pretty cheap I know they might not talk cheap at first glance but if you were to compare this to prices of some flagship engines from let's say some European brands you will see that in fact the LS great engines are very affordable for the amount of power you get from them and on top of that companies like a.m. for example make plug-and-play standalone ECU kits with everything included for the crate engines all you gotta do is install the engine you know connect a bunch of connectors and you're done a fully tunable setup is there and you're ready to take the LS to the stratosphere [Music] but neo s is also budget-friendly you can use the stock engines and mix-and-match camshaft and different parts to make you know a pretty affordable package that's still going to perform even in na or boosted applications so as I said it really is all there everything is accessible the aftermarket is amazing the engine platform was developed well the engineers did their homework and this explains why this is such a popular engine why it's such a popular swap and people might frown and say just another LS swap but let's face it enthusiasts want the most bang for their buck they want to have fun enthusiasts don't want to impress people in the comments section and that's why many choose the LS it really gives you a lot of bang and even if you're interested in really high levels of boost well beyond 650 horsepower it's kind of easy to do that with the LS as well the only things you really gotta replace are the cast pistons and the ford powdered metal stock rods honestly the rods are pretty much the only sort of weak link in this engine and once you get rid of them and put in some forged pistons the crankshaft can stay pretty much forever even though it's cast the stock nodular iron crankshaft can take 1000 horsepower like a champ all day long so with rods and pistons replaced 1,000 horsepower becomes sort of easy honest [Music] an interesting thing when it comes to camshaft and boost is that the stock cams on the ls3 for example and on some other LS engines as well are pretty well suited to boost you do not need to change the stock cams until you start aiming for pretty high horsepower levels that means intermediate and the old boost levels are totally fine with the stock caps on the other hand when it comes to NA tuning it all starts with the camshaft and it's the usual any tuning pathway when it comes to the LS its cams intake exhaust and some remaps and the good news is that the LS does respond pretty well to any tuning as well provided you use the right parts and the right tuning the only other sort of weak link when it comes to the LS engine is the oiling system and the fact that it provides and pumps oil to the valvetrain before getting it to the main bearings but this really is a concern only for extreme horsepower builds and for all in intermediate builds this really isn't a factor and if you're aiming for higher horsepower you can add safety and prevent headaches by simply upgrading the oil pump and there we have it that's pretty much it when it comes to the LS it's it's an engine that's readily available plentiful reliable powerful lightweight and compact and on top of that it has an amazing aftermarket I mean what more could you ask for the only thing it can't do is fit in the engine bay of a civic okay it can sort of do that too so yeah that's it when it comes to the LS I hope you enjoyed this and found it useful informative and somewhat entertaining and now it's time to end the video with what we always end iconic engines videos with and that's some cringy wrap but this time it's not just cringy it's the longest rap yet and it's also fourth American spirit but it's also I mean I'm a dude with a Slavic accent living in Europe rapping about an American pushrod v8 I honestly never expected things to get this bizarre but they did and I really don't care let's do it I'm a pushrod v8 and fool think I'm a dinosaur but they can't even imagine the power I've got in store I'm the result of the dedication of a golden generation and my birth is an act of divine creation when you come to the drag strip and an unfair final boss the game is rigged and the finish line I'm always the first to cross so stop your little petty hate you gotta go home before it's too late put your fork any kind of box in your tail between your legs I wasn't even racing you never beat me so stop lying on the interwebs my cars are red white blue I leave inputs in the dust this is the land of the free and in the v8 we trust [Music] you

Channel: driving 4 answers

Views: 125,187

Keywords: gm ls engine, gm ls engines explained, ls1, ls3, ls2, ls9, lsa, ls7, lq4, lr4, ls6, lm7, lm4, l59, l33, lq9, vortec, ls turbo, ls swap, ls twin turbo, ls explained, ls engine specs, best ls engine, ls engine for sale, 5.3 vortec, corvette, zr1, c4 corvette, c6 corvette, c5 corvette, camaro, zl1 camaro, gto, ls engine swap, ls engine build, ls engine tuning guide, ls crate engine, best engine ever, what makes the ls great, what makes the ls good, small block chevy, sbc, 5.3 vortec for sale

Id: EFPuyjA8aQM

Length: 26min 25sec (1585 seconds)

Published: Sun May 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/exedyne]

The venerable ls.