First a little background on this car and set-up. Our office manager of 7 years here at Tick Performance as many of you know is Joey. He got married a few years ago along with having a child so he didn't have much time for any type of hot rod in his life. Fast forward a few years to now and he got the itch to build a car again. He picked up a pretty dilapidated trans am that we have been slowly building up and working on for him. Joey stays very busy in the office and has no time to work on his own car so the techs here at the shop put a lot of hard work and effort into building this engine for him along with the trans as well.

Joey was also on a big budget as many new husbands and fathers are so pretty much EVERYTHING on this build was used or was already sitting in our shop. From the camshaft, to the cylinder heads, intake manifold etc. etc. etc. was all had from right here at Tick Performance. PRC stepped in and lent a hand in CNC porting Joey's stock LS3 cylinder heads (which are mis matched BTW!!!) along with a set of 1x7/8" headers. Monster gave Joey a smoking deal on a bad *** twin disc clutch as well. We've got some suspension pieces and rear end parts we'll be installing later on, but on to the engine set-up for now.

Here's a run down of the parts in the engine:

- LS3 aluminum block honed to 4.065"
- Wiseco 4.065" forged pistons tool steel top ring
- Callies 6.125" rods
- Manley 4.00" crankshaft
- PRC CNC'd LS3 heads with 11.6:1 compression
- 243/254 .624"/.595" 111+3 comp camshaft
- Stock LS3 intake/TB
- TSP 1x7/8" headers
- TSP 3" ORY Y-pipe with 3" cut-out
- Stock cat-back exhaust and muffler
- Tick Performance Level 2 T56
- Stock 10 bolt rear end

STD:


SAE:


As you can see this thing is making over 450ft. lbs of torque to the rear tires at 3900rpm!!! Torque is a perfect table top with power holding nicely to 6500rpm and sloping off gradually. I don't think you could ask for a better power curve for a true street car. Not only does the curve look nice it feels great in the car! For the budget nature of this build and pretty much using what we had on hand it turned out really nice.

I think this also goes to show that you DO NOT NEED some crazy camshaft for LS3 cylinder heads! These heads like overlap no matter what anyone will try to tell you! This camshaft has 26.5* of overlap@.050" and look at the torque it makes! For a set of cylinder heads that are "too big, too lazy, don't make torque etc. etc. etc." this engine and many of our other set-ups sure seem to be making torque just fine!

 

Thats nice power for cheap!

 

Matt,

He bought the car for 2500 bucks!

 

Martin - Those are great results and I'm very happy for Joey! He saw my SS at Tick's old one-car garage while Jonathan and his dad installed my longtubes back in July 2006 and complimented that it was one of the cleanest he's seen. He's a good guy and I'm glad he's back in the game!

 

Damn impressive

 

I'll be sure to tell Joey what you said! He works hard for the shop and without him we'd be dead in the water.
Thank you sir!

Keep in mind this is with a stock untouched LS3 intake and tb!

 

What would flywheel HP be approximately Martin ? I can't see the graph from work computer.

 

I would say right around 600 at the crank. It made 515rwhp/485rwtq SAE corrected and 525/495 STD corrected.

 

Nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

so when you say on a budget.......sure he may have had some free part or not.......what would we expect to spend on a motor like that.

 

Very nice!

 

Thanks Keith! Yours is next!
Hmm, I would have to ask him, but I can tell you that the 4.0" crank was used, the rods were new, pistons were new. Cam was used, heads were used, intake was used....there are so many used parts on this set-up that I can't name them all. I can at least say that the cost to build this engine would be close to 50% of what it would cost with brand new parts.

Also, when I say on a budget, that is a reference to the stock casting cylinder heads still being utilized although CNC ported they're still stock. The intake manifold is bone stock and I did make a mistake on the TB as it is a NW 92mm TB. Instead of spending 850 bucks on Kooks headers and 300 bucks on a Y-pipe he opted for a TSP combo which saved him possibly 400-600 bucks while still retaining nearly if not the same performance as a more expensive header. Most of our stroker engines after machine work, parts cost and labor to assemble the long block end up around 5k. If the customer supplies their own block it's normally around 4k. This is not factoring in removal of the old engine or installation of the new one.
Thank you sir!

I'll try and get some idle clips of this thing today as well!

 

Great job Martin!...Can't wait to see what that custom cam your doing for my AI headed 416.

 

It is very similar, but is less aggressive overall. Very smooth and mild Bullet cam lobes(which are proprietary as I had them ground specifically for your camshaft) and less overlap so it will drive smoothly for you. I also didn't want to kill of dynamic compression with a large intake lobe so that at your higher altitudes you don't lose torque across the rpm range.

Your camshaft will be 241/250 .625"/.600" 112+3.

 

nice !!!!!

 

what was the CR on this motor Martin?

 

Keith I believe it was 11.5:1.

Also for a track update, Joey took it out Friday night while we we're watching and helping some customers run just for fun to see what it would do. He spun badly in first gear, all the way through second AND third gear and still managed a 96mph trap speed@3700lbs! This was on dry rotted 17" Nitto 555R's, hardly a drag racing tire!

 

Where did u guys go? Farmington?

 

Very solid setup!

 

Yea we went to the Farm. Track was junk as usual.
Thanks Aaron!