THE OTHER LT1-AWESOME & UNAPPRECIATED

time once again for another installment of the other guys today we're taking a look at the small block ship so how is a small block Chevy the other guy so how exactly is a small block Chevy the other guy well if we take a look back through history we see the original Gen 1 small block you know muscle car era all the way through the tenacious toon pork stuck we skip ahead we see the gen 3 LS motor awesome Gen 4 LS motor even awesomer and the Gen 5 LT stuff but stuck in the middle there isn't forgotten water I give you guys the LT 1 everybody loves the original small-block and now everybody loves the LS and lt motors but what about the LT 1 it's kind of the Forgotten warrior but what people don't realize and people don't give the LT 1 credit for is that LT 1 is actually the most powerful production small-block GM ever made that's right now I and ran reproductions of the original 365 horse three 27 the 1970 LT one and the DZ 302 the LT 1 makes more power than all those original muscle car motors in fact an LT one makes more power than a 5.3 liter LS motor and the later LT 4 version makes as much power as an LS one that's right an original small-block making the same power as the legendary LS but there's more the story than that the original LT one was made in limited production it didn't have a long span but it helped the small-block Chevy go out with a bang and it's got plenty of potential so I've got some testing here on upgrading and LT one in this video we took a look at some minor modifications to an lt1 they include rocker arms camp chef and even nitrous but it's important to note our LT one made more power than the factory's rated it why is that is the dyno happy no it's just the way that we test you see when GM rates any of their motors they rate them the way that they run in the car no not at the wheels they rated at the flywheel but when they test it and rate it it has everything on it it has a full exhaust including the cats all the way back to the tailpipe it also has full accessories it also has a complete air intake system mass air air silencer everything they also run it with the factory conservative tune and they also run it at a higher temperature that we do that's why when we put a motor up on the dyno especially one with long tube headers an open throttle body no accessories and an optimized tune it always makes it always makes more power than the factory is rated at it's not a case of happy dinos just the test method so on our test we put an lt1 up on the dyno equipped it with long tube headers and the open throttle body but here's my question we don't know if this LT one came from a Camaro or a Corvette you see we got it from the Chevy ratio we know it was stopped but we don't know it application it came from UC GM rates the LT one differently in the Camaro than they do in the Corvette now historically they've always given the Corvette guys more power and sometimes it's just more power on paper you see the Corvette guy pays more money for his motor so he wants it to make more power justifiably so a lot of times those motors and the Camaro and the Corvette make the same power the only thing they change is the marketing let me know guys are you guys are lt1 experts let me know is there really a difference between the Camaro motor and the Corvette lt1 or is a power difference just marketing now we addressed a couple of these things a couple of the possibilities in our testing if there's a difference in the exhaust system which there often is between a Camaro and the Corvette for packaging we put long tube headers on there could also be a difference in the tune GM could detune the motor and the Camaro relative to the Corvette but we also address this because we ran a standalone management system and optimized the tune so let me know is there a difference in the camshaft between the Camaro in the Corvette let me know guys but anyway we ran our LT one up on the dyno we installed 1.6 rockers we installed a different camshaft we even installed nitrous but one of the cool tests is I also tried one of the Excel super ram intake manifolds it's interesting to see the difference in runner length between the short runner factory lt1 intake and that's super ram so let's get going get things ready for our LT 1 testing I'm gonna put this motor up on the dyno and equip it with a set of inch and five-eighths long tube headers and a 3-inch collector extensions about 18 or 20 inches long we also had the open factory throttle body and had no accessories and obviously an optimized - and we use the fast xfi management system which works really well basically I have to do is dial in the air fuel and timing we just start adjusting them we start with the air fuel and have low timing in it start adjusting the air fuel leading it out till it stops making power then we started adding timing belt stops making power play with the air fuel maybe just a little bit more make sure that we got everything and then that's what happens so when we did that and I was not responsible for the tuning on this this was early on before I was really doing that but equipped as such our factory lt1 produce 362 horsepower and 390 one foot-pounds of torque so it did really well one of the first tests we ran on this thing was to actually run nitrous on so we installed a Zek sweat EFI kit single fogger deal and started it out conservative and ran a 75 with it so here's what it looked like when we ran a 75 site see we engage that fairly early - or get a little spunky with it I think what's happening out at the top is we started to get a little bit rich out there at the top but you know just like with boost we want to run more boost the nitrous you want to run more nitrous so we step the jetting up and instead of the 75 shop he stepped it up to 125 and look at that magic more nitrous jetting more power and you can see you know nice gain so we were already up right up at the 500 horsepower mark with our nitrous but basically get stock lt1 and as a matter of fact 501 over 500 horsepower you see the torque peak as we engage this thing fairly early 566 foot-pounds all the way out here so this combination did good stock lt1 with headers open throttle body and then the nitrous kit it's a good combination I mean 500 horsepower would be pretty fun out on the street so now let's take a look and see what happened after we took the nitrous back off and then started running our minor modifications after running mattress on our LT 1 decided to make some minor upgrades the first thing that we started with was a set of roller rockers now we installed a set of 1.6 ratio roller rockers to basically increase the valve lift and it has a minor effect on duration - of one or two degrees so take a look at our combination this is our stock LT one with headers and here's what happened after we installed the 1.6 ratio of roller rockers we did pick up our up at the top power jump from 360 to up to 376 and you can see out here at the very top past 6000 we're actually starting to get into a valve float issue and that's not uncommon when you install a roller rockers what's a higher ratio when we're getting into valve float with those factory valve springs and this would come back to haunt us also when we installed a camshaft later on so these are our rockers but that combination worked good picked up good power obviously the lt1 heads flow enough to support this extra valve lift now let's take a look and see what happened after we installed our camshaft this is a comp 264 cam and I'll go ahead and put the specs up here for you you see it's fairly mild but we had same kind of problem we picked up quite a bit of power with the camshaft as expected Hera was up to 391 horsepower and it picked up torque to peak torque was up basically everywhere so this is really a good cam combination for the lt1 we were over 400 foot-pounds of torque which is pretty good especially given the factory short runner lt1 intake but we kind of exaggerated our problem out here with the valve spring you know this happens when we test we needed to upgrade the valve streams but the camshaft obviously we are going in the right direction now let's take a look and see what happened after we replace the factory L one intake cuz I actually did that before we did the camshaft and after we did the camshaft so let's take a look at that while we had this lt1 up on a dyno I also did a pretty cool test what we did was replace the factory lt1 intake with the accel super AM which was made famous by obviously John Lingenfelter and they use it a lot as a upgrade for the tuned port stuff on the previous generation small-block but it works really well and as well show there's a big difference in the shape of the power curve offered by that intake manifold and when we have this LT went up on the dyno we actually ran it on this combination both in stock trim and with the 264 cam so let's take a look at that after this motor was stock we will install the accel super AM you see a big change in power it gets a little busy out here between the horsepower and torque and the two different combinations so what I'm going to do is I'll get rid of will just look at them one at a time so this is the power difference between the factory intake in blue and the accel super AM in red as you can see the super in and a lot more power than the stock intake and this is what the stock cam and everything all the way up to 5400 and then they crossed over then the lt1 started making more power there's a big drop-off in power with that accel super ram and again i'm thinking that this is probably i think that thats valve float we don't ever see a drop that dramatic and power just from in the excel super am actually is shorter than a typical tuned port motor so it works pretty well but let's take a look and see we'll compare I want to show you the torque curve here because the torque curve is even more dramatic cuz that excel super air makes a lot more torque than the factory LT one you see here in the 3500 and 4000 rpm range there's a difference of over 40 foot-pounds of torque from that super ram so now let's take a look and see what happens when we run this same test but we did it after we installed our camshaft our final test on the LT one was compare the super ram versus the stock LT one intake but this time with the camshaft because I did the intake manifold go up again after we installed at 264 comp cam as you can see you know it's just kind of sad and think we didn't have enough ballast Pring to take advantage of the camshaft because with more camshaft that we put in here even though it's fairly mild it would allow that lt1 to keep making power past 6000 rpm and this would have kept going if I had enough valve spring in it and maybe I need to revisit some stuff with lt1 actually if I was gonna do the other guy lt1 I probably should choose a little 4.3 liter version to use in the Caprice that would be cool too but a small bore know how well it's gonna do but you know what they all do better with boost but let's take a look and see what happened after we install install the accel super am on this combination with the LT 1 and the camshaft so here we go as we can see again just like with the stock cam the same thing happens because rudder length increases torque production at lower engine speeds it always does that so again we still had over 40 foot pounds of torque here between these two and I think we would have seen a greater gain a greater difference in the horsepower had we added enough valve spring this thing because of both combination suffered from lack of valve spring but especially the short runner LT 1 intake is that that would have continued to climb because the short runner wants to make peak power out there and once you give it enough camshaft it already really had enough cylinder head so unfortunately I didn't give it a fair shake but you can kind of see the trend here the short runner lt1 intake wants to make peak power at a higher engine speed in this excel super AM if you want something that's really Turkey and kind of hard tune part Orion the excel super AM is a good combination I guess I need to look at that little 4.3 liter what do you guys think let me know in the comments let's get to our conclusion ok guys what do you think about our tests on the lt1 here's my take away the lt1 responds to performance modifications just like every small block it's good in stock form it's even better once we modify it what you guys think about the intake test factory lt1 versus the Super Ram classic Runner link stuff looking back at the data I can't help but wonder why is this the only LT one I've ever tested that's on me I obviously need to test more but I also can't help but wonder how would this combination respond to two turbos you know BIGBANG style here's a message for the lt1 owners I know the small block guys looked down on you because of the opt each opti spark stuff and I know the ls1 guys look down on you but remind them hey I've got an lt1 the most powerful small-block ever made I'm richer holder guys thanks for watching thanks for supporting the channel and I'll keep testing

Channel: Richard Holdener

Views: 326,896

Keywords: LT1, SMALL BLOCK, NITROUS, ZEX, CAM, COMP CAMS, ROCKERS, GEN 2, ACCEL, SUPER RAM

Id: Z-IJi2xqWyo

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2020