Steve Morris Engines Coaxes 3,000+ Horsepower From Its latest LS-Based V8: Track Time Tuesday
Steve Morris Engines has once again outdone itself with a monstrous yet tame for the street LS-based monster.
Steve Morris Engines is a familiar name for those that follow the world of drag racing, or just the LS powerplant in general. After all, this is an outfit that created the famous all-billet SMX powerplant present in Tom Bailey‘s Camaro, a five-time Hot Rod Drag Week winner that has run a best quarter-mile of 5.99 seconds while also racking up over 1,000 miles of reliable street use thus far. That’s the sort of dual purpose build that most of us have always dreamed of having, but now, it seems as if Steve Morris Engines has once again topped itself in that regard.
The purveyor of SME – Steve Morris himself – has been on a quest to build the most powerful LS-based V8 out there that’s also capable of being tame and reliable on the street, and that’s what has led to this – the SML, a follow-up to the SMX that’s made from 6061 aluminum and heat-treated for strength. It’s also designed to utilize off-the-shelf LS parts, which makes it quite versatile as well.
“In 2018, I wanted to make the ultimate drag-and-drive engine,” Morris explained to MotorTrend. “The SMX was my first venture into an all-billet engine that uses common parts. It’s fully water-jacketed for street driving. With that engine, we were the first to go 5s at Drag Week. We’ve been doing LS stuff for years, and I said, ‘I think I want to take this to the LS platform. It needs to be a drop-in for any LS guy, and be a 3,000-plus-horsepower-capable engine you can drive to California and back.”
The first step in that process was fixing the weak points present in the LS platform, such as the fact that the water-cooled powerplants tend to blow head gaskets in the 2,000+ horsepower range. From there, he utilized many of the same techniques present in the SMX platform, including SME’s own billet aluminum block, heads, and intake manifold. It takes around 110 hours to machine the block and heads, and the results are worth it, as an entire assembled SML engine weighs a mere 425 pounds.
Thus far, SME has built three SML powerplants and plans to produce around 12 per year. Customers can choose from long blocks or fully-assembled engines, and can even opt for turnkey supercharged or turbocharged monsters, right out of the box. The most powerful of the bunch thus far is an example fitted with twin Bullseye Power NLX 88mm mid-frame turbochargers, which cranked out an incredible 3,080 horsepower and 2,530 pound-feet of torque on the dyno when fed 37 pounds of boost. Crazy thing is, there’s more left in it, according to Morris, which just makes us want to bust out our checkbooks even more.
Photos: Steve Morris Engines
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