this being my second post (my first was to say i signed up for another forum ) i should give up a bit of background.

i have an '87 GT that is currently in the tear down stage and i was planning on using a 351W, quite possibly stroked out to a 408. i stumbled across some info a couple of weeks ago regarding someone that put an LS motor into a foxbody mustang. i thought that sounded interesting, since they claimed some very good HP/torque numbers and still got 25mph, and started digging around.

I've seen some pretty amazing numbers regarding these motors (supposedly with some head porting, an intake, i think a cam swap, and fresh "tune"...500-550hp??? is that for real?) Is there somewhere i can read what all of the different alphabet initials mean (LS1, LS2, LS6, LQ4, etc). i'm not familiar with the GM abreviations. i've been able to piece together some of it by going through differnt threads but the info is really spread out. which motor is the REAL LS1? and what vehicles did it come in? is it the Z28, trans-am, and vette motors? what years? if i can source a block, from what i'm assuming is the LS1, from the local junk yard would it be worth the effort to build it back up or go with somthing else?

my intentions for the car are a daily driver (sort of), autocrossing, road courses, and some open road racing (silver state classic) so i believe a manual trans would work best. I do plan to do a fair amount of suspension mods as well since foxs don't handle that well out of the box. so what motors are best to start with? what vehicles did they come in? are the parts for the swap starting to become available (headers, motor mounts, k-members, trans. mounts, etc).

i've read a couple of times where guys are spending 10k to do this swap??? is that what it takes to get this put together? I read an article last week from Popular Hot Rodding (i think) and i didn't think they had spent that much money? what are most of you guys going to end up spending on your swaps? thanx in advance for the help/info/insight.

 

budget wise, 7-10k is probibly a good guess unless your broke like me and just make as many parts as you can. then 5k is a fair guess.

 

the ls1 first came out in the vette in 97. then from 98-02 it was in the fbody(camaro& trans am) the gto had the ls1 for a couple of years then got an ls2. the ls1 (5.7L)has a bore of 3.905. the ls2 (6.0L) is a 4.0 bore. the ls1,ls2, & ls3 (6.2L) are aluminum blocks. the lq4& lq9 are truck motors. the difference in these are in the heads. one is higher compression than the other. a whole lot of racers use the 6.0L iron block that came in chevy/gmc trucks for the strength. hope this helps.

 

thank you very much for the info. that's the explanations i was looking for.

 

best bang for the $ is the 6.0 lq based motor imo.
very common in 2500 silverados and other suvs. the most common is a lq4. a 364ci 6.0 motor.
i built one using a stock crank,rods, hyper pistons. oe upgraded 243 heads with cam and supporting bolt ons and tune. and net 490rw n/a thru a t56 and get around 24mpg.