greaseman69

I found a guy who's selling a 98 trans am WS6 with a modified engine. I'm coming from rotary engines so I'm relatively unfamiliar with pushrod V8s. Vague understanding of what these mods do but would like to get more experienced advice. Here are the specs:

The motor is an 02 ls1 block 317 heads with Lunati gold dual valve spring kit and stock valves Texas speed 7.4 pushrods Ls7 lifters C5r lingenfelter timing chain Melling high pressure oil pump Rings gapped 20 thousands Cam is 237/245 .578 .578 114lsa Msd wires 180 t-stat

Does this seem like a solid build? Did a little research myself but have come to no definite conclusion. Thanks for the help.

MplSS

That's a pretty big cam, what has been done to the heads?, what intake?, What exhaust? Dyno or track #'s? Stock short block/cubes? It's worth a try if it looks like it's been put together right, it's only money, if you buy it and hate it, send it on its way.

greaseman69

speed engineering 1 7/8 headers with y pipe into bullet style borla xr1 muffler, no mention of intake, 317 heads is all i got. that's pretty much all the mods he's listed, sent me a video of it idling and it sounds good but what do i know. transmission is a t56 with stage 2 clutch, upgraded master cylinder.

MplSS

Well, since he mentions ring gap, that makes me think it's not a stock short block. Maybe forged internals? You just never know until you dog in a little. I didn't mean to sound pithy in my first response, but life is short, if you have the money and want the car, do it. You'll prolly end up tweaking it to your liking anyway, I'm forever screwing around with mine, even when it doesn't really need anything!!

B52bombardier1

Oil pressure hot and cold? Any engine smoke? I wonder if he would pull a rear spark plug to see if its running rich or burning oil? Does the engine run hot? A compression check would also be good but that might be asking too much.

Rick

greaseman69

yeah who the hell knows, you might be right, and if it blows i'm willing to find a stock ls1 to drop in and build myself. btw is there no reason to have aftermarket ring gap on a stock block?

greaseman69

havent seen it in person yet so i'm not sure, he's got a nice aftermarket temp gauge (assuming it works) so of course i'll check that out. what temp range should i look for?

ls1fan92

iTrader: (5)

Its a learning process for me too... New to engine work/performance builds. Does the seller have any HP numbers or a slip to show? I'm interested on the power that cam and heads put down. The only information I found was a ersons cam E112116A ... I know nothing about them except that its supposed to be good for supercharged? Maybe thats why he had the 317 heads on it. I could be wrong though, might be a custom grind from one of the vendors here.

greaseman69

this is really all the info he gave me, i asked for a full mods list. that suggests it's untuned, which is strange. no dyno or track sheets at all.

Darth_V8r

iTrader: (4)

Honestly it sounds like a turd. Way over cammed and 317 has large combustion chamber so low compression. Low compression large cam runs like stir fried ***.

I think he went a few mods too far and is unhappy with it and unloading it vs doing an other heads cam package to make it right.

Che70velle

iTrader: (6)

Agree with Darth here. Sounds to me like the previous owner was setting this car up for boost, and backed away. I feel like you’ll end up doing a cam/heads/intake swap to be happy, which can get expensive. Unless up course your up to turboing the car, which would be a great candidate with those heads. 317 heads are a large chamber head, generally used in the LS world for creating a lower compression engine, which guys love when going big turbo setup.

ls1fan92

iTrader: (5)

I'm curious as to how far setup the car is? Is rearend swapped? Tranny built? Depending how cheap he's selling for, make a good f.i. project. Depending how much boost you want is gonna depend on the bottom end though lol.

How much does he want for it?

Utinator

It sounds similar to my set-up, except I have a much smaller cam. I went with the 317 heads, because I wanted to add a supercharger further down the road. It sounds like this car was heading the same direction. If the heads were milled, then they will work just fine with an N/A set-up. That cam would be ridiculous in an N/A set-up though.

If you can get this car at a good price, and don't mind adding a supercharger, then go for it! If a supercharger is out of the question, then plan on doing a heads/cam swap ASAP.

ls1fan92

iTrader: (5)

I agree with you on that. But like Darth and Chevelle said, it seems like he just put a combo together that he couldn't finish. Realized for how much boost/power they wanted would mean replacing everything else down the drive line. Is wonder how that setup would run on a forged 6.0 ?

00pooterSS

iTrader: (40)

That's a really poorly matched setup. And I don't agree it was for boost. Look at the cam, that's not a boost cam.

Looks like several random parts were thrown together and that's how it ended up. I don't think there was an actual plan there.