Top 5 Mods To Make An LS Engine Reliable.

today we're gonna cover the five things you absolutely must do to your LS if you want it to be reliable you do these five things very strong chance you won't have any issues you don't do these five things pretty likely you will the LS can get a bad rap for certain things and a lot of it it's just lack of foresight not doing a few really simple things that can prevent you having issues down the road so I'm currently putting the other this L 92 it's a 6.2 liter aluminum block out of an O 7 Escalade and we're kind of building this thing up nicely you know I'm going through and you know doing ARP cam bolts an ARP head bolts a new head gaskets new lifters new trays new timing chains good for the first time I put a new timing chain on one of these hardened push rods you know all that good stuff we're not opening up the bottom end or anything crazy like that but we're going a little while with it just because it's a nice and relatively expensive base engine I just I kind of want to it's kind of fun to put nice parts on your engine but you absolutely do not need all this stuff again you only need five things and then necessity to do these five things is based solely on if you're using this car for drifting or road racing you something where it's under a lot of strain it's these sustained high rpm sustain g-loads switching in G loads so something like a drift car you're in drift you're going from one direction to the other the car is experiencing G loads both directions your Road racing in the corners I mean hell even if you're doing an Australian style burnout at a cletus in cars this would apply to you but it did not apply to you in the sense of something like my Silverado 1500 here this thing's got a six liter it doesn't have any of these five things done and it's fine because this is a street truck it tows stuff around I maybe do a burnout here and there it's not under high stress high G lows high sustained rpm it's a cruiser so keep in mind we're not talking about cruisers here we're talking about things that are gonna get the snot beat out of them consistently not once in a while oh what they're gonna get the crap beat out of them all the time that's what you're talking about and that's when you need to do these five things also it's worth noting that I came up with this list through trial and error if you ask someone what you need to deal well you don't need to do for an LS swap in your drift car you're gonna get a different answer for every person you talk to some people will say you got to do all this some people say you don't need to do any and the truth is somewhere in the middle and I've kind of figured out what I think should be done and what seems to work for me through trial and error the first motor I had in this car I went with the I don't need to do all that crazy stuff mentality we're all knocked at first drift event learn my lesson made some changes this motors been there for a year and a half gets driven three or four times a month the drifts of n spends a lot of its life at rev limiter getting the snot beat out of it all the time and it's been 100 percent fun not a single issue so what are the five things internal oil seals so everyone focuses on changing their valve cover gaskets their valley cover gasket their front main seal their rear main seal you don't want to swap they don't want this thing to leak however what often gets neglected is the very few internal oil seals that need replacement as well too the first one that is often forgot is on your cam retainer plate so this is one I always forget myself I often don't think about it until on putting a cam in and then I realize I don't have it and then I've got to order it let me show you so this is your camera Taylor plate this is what holds your can in the engine keeps it from walking back and forth so you've got these two oil passages oil comes through here boom crosses over going that way and then you have this seal now every single one of these I've taken off this is a hundred thousand mile motor I've taken off two hundred thousand momma or 70,000 miles they don't look like that they are completely flat very brittle the chances of the hetnet sealing when you put it back on to me seem pretty unlikely I mean there is not much of a seal left there to seal anything now this seal leaks you're not going to notice it it's not gonna leak out of your engine it's behind the timing cover but it will cause you to lose pressure because it will be leaking pressure out and that'll just kind of be dripping back down into your pan this is something very important to replace if you're not coming in here you're not doing a cam or anything I would say you could probably avoid doing this unless you know you know the motor has a little oil pressure issues that would be worth changing but if you're if you're touching the cam if you're pulling any of this stuff off I mean he'll even if you're just changing your front main seal it's worth doing because it's not that hard to pull the cam gear off pull this off swap another one on so that's the first overlooked one the second one is at the back there's what's called a dumbbell or barbell they under a few different names so this is an aftermarket aluminum one basically we're standing at the back of the block this one goes in just like that it's got our ring here and basically a metal-on-metal seal here where it goes into the block so what this does is this prevents your oil from bypassing the filter you're always going to come in here it's gonna hit this have to go down into the filter element then it will come out the filter and up through the rest of your engine so these aluminum ones are a little bit tighter tolerance to prevent oil from bypassing the filter basically you just end up with a lower micron count filtration because you're not allowing so much of it to bypass it but if you do is this back seal same situation where it'll just leak out down into the pan you won't know you'll just lose oil pressure so this is another one it's simple enough to replace again I always do these aluminum ones because on my LS Miata I have a dry sump and this is basically what prevents my oil pressure from feeding its way to the front of the engine instead of going where it needs to go so it's a little more crucial for me but definitely worth they're placing even if you just replace it with an OEM one I just like the little aluminum ones they seem to work well they are noticeably tighter and when you install them and lastly probably the most common one that that is the least forgotten on the bottom the oil pickup - now the pump off of this engine because this is gonna be going dry sump as well I won't be using this factory wet sump pump but the pickup tube overhang is very very important you can see on this engine a slight cause for concern for me pulling the support very loose in there it should kind of have you should have to kind of press it in and kind of pop in this one not the case you can see how much I can wiggle it around the other design flaw we have to deal with as well is the pump has two bolt holes two threaded holes on it however GM uses a one bolt pickup so they do sell a brace to bolt on here to basically hang on to this other side so you utilize both bolt holes now that's important because what can happen is over time this can wobble around flop around you know all the weight that you have back through here I can wear out that overhang off that oring goes you're losing oil pressure imagine it like this it's like trying to suck through a straw with a hole in it your pump is sucking the oil from the bottom of the pan up and then pumping it through your engine if the o-rings torn and it's sucking any air through here that's most of what its gonna do it's gonna suck air in instead of oil because it's not going to be able to build up the pressure to suck the oil up in it so this is a very important one again this is probably the most commonly changed one because generally if you're doing an LS swap you have to change the oil pan anyway which normally comes with a different pick up - with a new o-ring so this is one that's not super often overall but if you're not changing your pan definitely worth looking at your pickup tube o-ring and I've on every engine that I've used a wet sump on I've put the race on there just to be extra safe again if this fails it's no bueno there's no coming back from that all right time to move on to thing number two lifters so this is a suggestion if you have a Gen 4 engine pretty much pertinent if you have a gen 3 engine we won't go into the differences between a gen 3 and Gen 4 engine that's something you should know when you're buying an engine whether you're getting a gen 3 or Jun 4 because a lot of stuff will depend on that like your engine electronics and Yatta Yatta moral of the story the gen 3 lifters were very prone to failure now if your lifter fails that's bad news because what happens one you're gonna wipe out your cam lobe - you're gonna send a hole hot in it metal through your engine neither of those two good things both are gonna require you disassembling at a minimum the top end of your engine so the gym for lifters are called ls7 lifters if you look it up if you trying to buy some just type in ls7 lifters and that the djinn for lifters are what comes up it just means the redesign so what is the difference this is a gen 3 lifter as you can see the roller tip is almost completely exposed it's just got these two little tabs holding it in place and what can happen is those can break your roller tip can go flying or turn sideways or many things can happen and cause you to wipe out your cam lobe as you can see on the Gen 4 one the roller tip is almost completely encased just the tip being exposed where it needs to roll on the cam this also gives you more surface area for where they lift their brides on the inside of the lifter bore so both of those are good things both those are improvements definitely again especially if you're gonna beat on it something you want to do to a gen 3 engine is upgrade the lifters they're really not that expensive either you would think they might be it's like 100 hundred and 20 bucks for a set of lifters and trays for your entire engine the other thing that's nice about changing the trays is the lifter tray can break and basically your lifter has these two flat spots on it and those are what located in a lifter tray obviously it has to be in a certain orientation for the cam spinning to spend on the roller correctly this and sideways it's bad news it's not gonna roll you know I'm a lot of friction there again you're gonna wipe out your cam lobe and it's gonna be a mess so yeah the the older trays can break and then basically there's nothing to hold the lifter straight it's in a smoothbore and it can just spin around as it may and wreak havoc so lifters are a very important thing to do to your gen 3 engine moving on to thing number three rocker arm upgrade so your factory rocker arm has this cap pressed into it looks like this on the inside so you've got the center support this is what bolts into your head and then you've got these two sets of needle bearings so when you take those apart you have the cap the internals and you just have a bunch of little rollers just hanging out loose in there so what happens is especially at high rpm again this is very important when you're you know running an engine at higher rpm there's nothing to hold this cap in other than the friction of it being pressed in so this cap can back out like that boom cap comes off boom needle bearings everywhere so then you've got needle bearings floating through your engine obviously not good getting picked up in the oil pickup getting lodged in places not good now it's something you want to have happen so there's all this a trunnion upgrade is in order so there's a couple of types of turn Ian upgrades on this engine on doing the brass trying an upgrade but basically on the brass one and replaces that whole assembly with a much beefier Center - brass bushings instead of roller bearings and then snap rings on either end to prevent anything from backing out and falling off it is now contained the only way we're losing this is if this snap ring pops off which as you probably know pretty unlikely the other option is the what I have in the OSP out of currently same basic concept is this just with instead of a brass bushing here it's just a beefy roller bearing with the snap ring still so that you know the main solution is having something external to prevent everything from falling out that's when you cause problems the roller bearing isn't necessarily the problem more so the bearing cap popping out so yeah you know if it's gonna be in a car that you're gonna daily spend a lot of time Street driving you know put a lot of miles on I would think the roller bearing would be the better option you know my car is pretty much a track car it does see some Street use but you know I'm not gonna put that many miles on it the brass is a little more durable it just doesn't have the same longevity as the roller bearing but either way is a good option and pertinent to ensuring the health of your LS engine you can see all my rocker arms here ready to go back on the engine thing number four so this next one in my opinion is the most important thing and the main thing that you need to do to make your LS last it is one downfall of the LS and there is a way to fix it what's the downfall rod nock oil starvation how do you fix it good oil systems so the LS engine does not have a priority main oiling system now what that means is different engines have different kinds but basically a priority main system would be where the oil pump pumps the oil to the main bearings then down to the rod bearings first and then they go up to the head last more or less on a now us yes pumps it up to the cam first then down to the mains then down to the rod bearings so because of that if you have any oil starvation where you don't have oil flow for a second your rod bearings are the last thing to get oil and they're arguably under the most stress so that's a that's a big issue with the LS a big design flaw you know you you can hey tell us as you can love us is but you can't argue with them in the sense of they have great packaging there's a million and a half of them you can find these things anywhere I mean there's probably hundreds of aluminum block six to L ninety-two truck motors on eBay for 22,000 2500 bucks ship you can get parts in any auto parts store hate them or love them you can't argue with the logic of four or 500 horsepower n/a reliably but to get there the be reliable you have to take care of their biggest Achilles heel the oil systems how do you do that what do you do there's two options I love the more extreme option because I wanted to ensure that that never happened again I brought knocked my first motor my first drift event because of oil starvation so we're all starvation comes into play is when the car is moving around and the oil is sloshing around in the pan you have that pickup tube trying to suck that oil up and when you go under haiji load all the oil moves away from the pickup the pickup picks nothing up and then your your engine is starving of oil until that pickup gets underwater again that's why it's called a wet sump because it's generally supposed to be wet you know under the level of the oil so the simplest remedy for that is a good oil pan so that is first and foremost on my roommate Ben's car here we have he has a baffled pan so basically within the pan there's a little trapdoor baffles that allow oil into the sump area where the butt pickup tube is but not out of it so that you know as its sloshing around ideally the oil is collecting in the center the other big thing that one must do something I think is a necessity if you're gonna drift your car is an AK you some p-- so basically what this is is it's a pressurized cylinder so it's got a piston as it fills with oil that piston compresses the air and it becomes under pressure this fills up with oil holds a certain volume and a certain pressure and if your agent dropped below a certain pressure it will then supply the engine with that oil now that is usually enough to get you through those moments of starvation you can see the line comes in here to this T then there is a check valve here if the Accu sound does need to supply oil instead of it going all the way up here and through the cooler and stuff it just goes straight into the engine and then that line of course runs all the way back to the Accu sound tank so that is the simplest solution some people consider it a band-aid I don't think it's a band-aid I think it's a solution you have a pressurized cylinder when your oil pressure drops below a certain level it supplies the oil until the oil pressure is back up and it fills back up and is ready to go for the next time I don't like a capacitor for a car stereo and you know that's usually enough because usually if you're starving if the car starving the wallets not starving the oil all the time that's just under certain circumstances maybe Road racing on a certain track and there's a really long corner where you sustaining you know algae load all the way around the corner maybe the last half of the corner for two three seconds is when you're starving of oil it can supply oil for amount of time the rest of the track you don't have a problem so I think it's a good option it's definitely like a pretty foolproof option again I went with the more elaborate option because it's a part I've always wanted I went with a dry sump so there is a pump down there you can see that belt behind this belt so basically it's a belt that runs from the crank pulley to the pump the pump then at the end of the cycle pumps oil through my cooler through my filter housing and then up into my engine through the engine goes back to the pan I have a dry sump pan which has is completely flat my dad's two fittings the pump then sucks the oil it's called a scavenge pump it's basically creates a vacuum it sucks the oil out of the pan so the oil does not stay in the pan it only goes to the pan to leave it doesn't hang out there like it does in a wet sump then goes through the pump the pump pumps it back into my tank here it comes into the tank up here and then the pump sucks fresh oil from the bottom of the tank back up to itself and then pumps it through the engine around and the cycle returns so my oil supply there's oil in the lines and there's some residual oil in the pan in the engine but my main oil supply is kept here in this baffle tank so no matter what the car is doing no matter what it's experiencing the oil is not gonna slosh away from here it's filled up to here it physically can't get away from the pickup so the benefit is this is you always have oil pressure you're able to change your oil pressure so the pump is adjustable you can add oil pressure you can take it away the oil pressure is more consistent you know instead of being say 20 30 psi at idle and then 80 at wide open throttle you know it's pretty much like when it's hot 50 at idle in 60 65 at wide open throttle high rpm so you get more consistent oil pressure the one big pitfall of a dry sump though is you do have an external belt so you can lose that belt it can snap you know it could fall off you get a rock in there that sends it off and if that boat comes off you have no oil pressure so that is the one big pitfall and we kind of consider that a lot when building Ben's car you know the pros and cons of everything and that's why he decided to go with the Accu sump mostly because yes it's not as good of a system but it is more foolproof in the sense that you don't have to worry about a belt on the front of your engine that could come off and then other than that the cost this is a pretty basic dry sump kit with the ATI damper and the tank and everything it was like right at $3,000 and a lot of people think I'm crazy for spending that kind of money on a little assistant doesn't make car faster doesn't make the car better it just makes it essentially more reliable and to me it's absolutely worth it even with that motor which is an L 33 to 5-3 aluminum block by the time I do the cam and the springs and go through and do the gaskets get the engine you know put it all together you know I'm not about 1,500 bucks two thousand dollars into the engine and then my time to swap the engine and then whatever I'm missing out on you know if I took my car to California and I rod knocked my motor because I didn't have a dry self then that trips wasted and that trip could have cost more than three grand so to me you know if it saved me from blowing up another motor it paid for itself I think it's worth it and it's one of those nerd parts have always wanted so you know one of those things at a bare bare minimum you need a really good baffled pan I tried that on this car this car had a good baffle pan and I still rod knocked it I still had starvation I tried a good baffle pan on this car as well it's just a bone stock iron block 5-3 didn't work either every time I've drifted it the car has lost more and more oil pressure and the motor needs replacement so I say at a bare minimum you need the pan and an a Q sump if you're going to do something like drifting or road racing or again I'm showing us that all burnouts that we did some cars consistently you know if you're only gonna go do burnouts once a year you could probably get away with a baffled pan but again if you're gonna drive your car very hard performance try that all those things you absolutely should do in a Q sump you know the a Q something's up costing like six to eight hundred bucks with the lines and fittings and everything I know it sounds like a lot for something that doesn't make your car faster but it is the one downfall of the OS is the oil system you fix the oil system they don't really have many other issues everything else is is minimal stuff that's I mean you know the lifters and stuff that that's just something you're doing preventative maintenance because that design could fail as opposed to the other ones that pretty much never fail the oil system is just the one main thing that is a problem and you see a lot of people will buy an ls3 crate motor and they'll put a basic little pan on it no Accu sump and then rod knock it and they don't understand why they're eight thousand nine thousand dollar crate motor blow up what blew up because you starved in a royal oil and fuel with our lifeblood of your engine i mean if you have a will and you have fuel the right amounts of each you're probably gonna be okay it takes a lot for something else to go wrong in an LS if you have a good oil supply so you know that that is the most important thing and then the last thing thing number five you guys gonna like this one don't with it just don't just don't mess with it don't do it that so many people go down the rabbit hole as i like to call it the the wall your there's oh why are the heads off huh - little pull the crank out and pull the rods off and take the Pistons out do new rings and do new rob banks do you main Mary's do ARP stuff don't mess with it GM knew what they were doing when they put this engine together there's people making eight hundred a thousand plus horsepower on stock bottom ins your naturally aspirated 350 400 horsepower car is gonna be just fine it's gonna be just fine don't mess of it again this motor was assembled in a factory you know with with machines that torque everything in the exact right sequence the exact right torque spec and everything in its place exactly as it should be GM is a lot better at building this engine then I would say 90% of the people who could put this engine together you can make that all you want doesn't matter my point is you can do top-end stuff all day you know you got to pull the heads to do the lifters not a big deal you can change ahead in the car you can change the lips during the car know that stuff's a big deal there's not a whole lot to mess up on it don't touch the bottom end and once it's a question old motor you know with the motor and the rx-7 when I pull that out I'm gonna have to because as low pressure I need to verify if the bearings are good and if it's a really high mileage motor it might be worth popping a couple rod caps off taking a look at the bearing seeing if they look good as long as they look good put it back together as you found it don't mess with it I mean you gotta remember this thing's lasted 100 150 200 thousand miles as it is what are you gonna do to improve that if your bearings aren't worn out there is no reason to replace them if your engine is not questionable there's no reason to tear into it yes if you're trying to make 2,000 horsepower you gotta build your motor if you're gonna try to rev to 9,000 rpm you take it apart you got to change things yes but for the most part for the grand majority of people you don't need to open the bottom end and leave it alone get it in your car go drive it have fun with it and enjoy it and yeah that wraps up the five things you need to do to make sure your LS is reliable let me know if I left anything out I forgot anything anything you'd like to add but other than that thanks for watching thanks for subscribing goodbye [Music] ain't even take a lap he was just out there [Applause] sounds cool this guy

Channel: Taylor Ray

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Id: waSfWBpFuHU

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2020