BY Barry Kluczyk Photography by The Author

few years ago, a colleague of ours spent more than a few bucks to elevate the performance of his LS1-powered fourth-gen Camaro SS. It was a bolt-on extravaganza, with long-tube headers, a snazzy-looking intake manifold upgrade, and a larger throttle body, along with a cold-air intake and more. The engine looked great under the hood and sounded even better through the headers.

On the chassis dyno and with proper tuning, power to the tires definitely increased, but the gain wasn’t dramatic. Worse, the car’s crisp street performance was dulled like your mom’s old caravan down a cylinder or two. To put it nicely, it was a dog, particularly at low rpm, where what little torque the LS1 made down there all but evaporated.

It’s all because our buddy took the traditional bolt-on approach to building horsepower—the things we all grew up reading about when people were trying to coax an extra 25 hp out of a smog-laden two-barrel small-block. Opening up the restrictive intake and exhaust systems were the keys to make 275 hp back then, but it’s the total opposite with an LS engine.

Homebuilt Old-School Small-Block

BY Jason Lubken Photography by The Author

f you have been following along, in last month’s issue we gave you the rundown on how we assembled the bottom end in our little homebuilt small-block Chevy. Now comes the fun part—heads, valvetrain, and the finishing touches. Working with a basically stock rotating assembly, it’s still very feasible to squeeze out some extra power. The next big priority was bolting on a great set of heads. It’s a practice hot rodders have played with for over a century, and the concept is simple: higher compression plus better airflow equal more power. But we also wanted to be careful not to sacrifice reliability and driveability.

The horsepower per dollar scale is always tough when you’re on a budget. You want that best-bang-for-your-buck type of thing. Reliability and longevity are worth something, too. I was looking for the best of both worlds when it came to the engine—that perfect mix of driveability but with an old-school muscle vibe.

When you dive into it, it’s not hard to find a great set aftermarket heads, or even factory options when budget is a high priority. A set of iron Vortecs (L31 ’96-00 truck and SUV) could work for some applications, but with higher-lift cams they require additional machine work at additional expense. After some cost analysis and shopping around, I looked to Speedway Motors for help.

BY Ryan Manson Photography by The Author

uilding an engine from scratch isn’t a relatively difficult thing to do so long as one is fastidious and pays attention to all the details. It’s also very rewarding (albeit stressful) when that handbuilt engine is fired for the first time and put through its paces on the engine dyno. There’s a bit of a pucker factor to be sure, but the satisfaction of a job well done is much more gratifying than dropping that credit card on a crate engine. Building an engine from the ground up also gives one a better idea of what’s going on inside the engine, making diagnosis and repair easier. And for some of us, just getting our hands dirty and spending the time in the shop building something is better therapy than any fancy spa can provide!

We wrapped up the build side of the engine in our previous story, but that doesn’t mean that things were complete. As it were, we still had to add the induction and ignition components before our date with the guys at Westech Performance Group in Mira Loma, California, arrived. Which brings us to the importance of utilizing an engine dyno when building custom engines. Installing an engine in a vehicle and getting things in running order is no small feat. There are a myriad of electrical and plumbing connections that need to be made, fluids added, exhaust built and installed, torque converters, bellhousings, and so on. Going through all that work just to find something in need of repair that requires the removal of that new engine can be frustrating, to say the least. But by running the engine beforehand on an engine dyno, any little finicky issue can be addressed beforehand and in a situation that makes doing so much easier. It also presents a convenient environment for initial break-in, saving your neighbor’s nerves to be tested another day.

G-Body G-Machine

BY Jesse Kiser Photography by The Author

ince its completion, our ’82 Malibu Wagon hasn’t experienced a significant breakdown … yet. A fun, reliable street cruiser, it wasn’t until our first autocross at UMI Motorsports Park that we discovered its performance shortcomings. We spun out in clouds of smoke, murdered some cones, and went home with a lackluster finish. The combination of the wagon’s parts—750-rwhp LS1, built 4L80E, Strange Engineering 9-inch, and UMI Stage 3.5 tubular suspension—is unrealized. Our wagon has untapped potential. Luckily, that’s what an East Coast winter is for: more projects.

The wagon is a family hauler, burnout monster, and great street car, but we want to turn up the heat: A T56 six-speed manual swap so we’re always in the right gear, a Holley Terminator X for better tuning, and Aldan coilovers for better road response and adjustability. We’re starting with possibly the easiest of them all: coilovers, so we installed Aldan American coilovers on our Chevy G-body.

By Jeff Smith Photography by The Author

t’s an unavoidable fact of life. The object of our ’60s and ’70s Bowtie muscle car affections are well past long in the tooth. They are well past silver anniversaries and are sneaking up on 60 years of extended service. Time tends to take its toll on items that we often take for granted—like the electrical system.

Another fact of muscle car life is that electrical systems also suffer some of the greatest abuses. Electrical hacks, botched wiring attempts, cheesy add-on mistreatment, and a host of other sticky black electrical tape exploitation over decades of modifications have left these machines often in need of attention.

In 1917, Chevrolet was just 7 years old, but that didn’t stop it from releasing a nifty 288ci overhead-valve V-8 with 55 hp. For use in a new line of larger, upscale D-Series cars, its 3.36×4.00-inch bore x stroke was much closer to being “square” than its horrifically under-square GM rivals. Unfortunately, this advanced V-8 wasn’t offered in the light 2,600-pound Model 490s where it could have earned legend status as one of the first muscle cars. Just 6,350 of these OHV V-8s were built before the plug was pulled on the big D-Series at the end of 1918. This display chassis is part of the Coker Tire historical collection in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Other GM V-8s of the day included Cadillac’s 70hp 314 flathead of 1915 (3.12×5.12-inch bore and stroke), Oldsmobile’s 246.7 cube—with advanced overhead valves and hemispherical combustion chambers (2.87×4.75-inch bore and stroke)—also of 1915, and Oakland’s 50hp, 346-cube flathead of 1916 (3.50×4.50-inch bore and stroke). American V-8s aren’t just a post–World War II phenomenon!

One Century Ago

By Steve Magnante Photography by The Author

he year 1929 was a big one for Chevrolet. That’s when the 194ci overhead valve (OHV) six-cylinder engine arrived as standard equipment in all Chevrolet passenger cars. This new six was just about as big a piece of news for Chevrolet–and its customers—as the small-block V-8 of 1955. Chevrolet marketed the new engine as “a Six at the price of a Four,” instantly rendering Ford’s existing flathead four obsolete. Better still, even though the 194-cube Chevy OHV six was 6 ci smaller than Ford’s 200-cube four-banger, it was 6hp stronger (46 hp versus Ford’s 40 hp).

Oddly, Chevrolet didn’t assign a spiffy, whizbang marketing name to the 194 six until 1934 when a revised cylinder head with canted exhaust valves and modified burn characteristics earned it the official title: Blue Flame Six. But among the general public, the rather generic-looking pan head fasteners securing the camshaft cover plate to the side of the engine block earned the title “Stovebolt Six.” These “Stovebolt Sixes” became so prevalent in the following decades that Chevrolets became known generically as “Stovebolts” among those of us with greasy fingernails, a term used well into the ’70s.