A few months back we were contacted by a gentleman that recently acquired a ZL1-1LE and was looking to put together an “ultimate performance package” for the car that would allow him to meet his universal goals. The customer explained that he wanted to be able to compete in track day events, drag race and high speed events, as well as cruise on the highway or sit in traffic with ease, and do all of these things well. Due to his location on the west coast, the customer also has limited access to good fuel so wanted something that would be able to perform on 93 pump gas without the use of E85 or race fuels, or having to source methanol for an injection kit. Lastly, he did not want to take away from what the ZL1-1LE platform provided and lose low-mid range torque by going to a Procharger system. With all of this in mind, we put pen to paper and developed a combination that would not only meet his goals, but prove to be something extremely powerful for any ZL1 owning gearhead.



The build list was as follows:



· Whipple Supercharger’s 2.9L Supercharger upgrade in red finish

· Vengeance Racing Cold Air Intake System

· Vengeance Racing CNC Ported LT4 Cylinder Heads

· Vengeance Racing Cam Kit Plus with Stage III Cam

· Kooks Header and Exhaust Longtube Header system with Connection Pipes.

· ATI Performance Products balancer and Lower pulley

· WeaponX Motorsports heat exchanger upgrade with trunk-mounted HX reservoir

· Vengeance Racing Valve Covers with coil relocation















As many know the ZL1-1LE is one of the best handling and most capable vehicles on the market, so no suspension or brake modifications were performed on this visit. The focus was to improve performance while retaining the explosive torque from the LT4 engine, so the center piece of this project would be the Whipple 2.9L supercharger upgrade to replace the stock 1.7L unit from GM. We have used the 2.9L Whipple in several LT4 builds in the past with massive power potential, and knew that this would be a key component for the build. The Whipple not only allows us to make more power but aids in cooling as well with its higher displacement and improved internal intercooler bricks. To help on intake temperature cooling even further, we reached out to Weapon-X Motorsports who was running a package deal on their “Triple X” heat exchanger kit as well as their trunk-mounted ice tank. With this package in place we are seeing near ambient IAT’s even without ice while cruising and extremely minimal IAT increase during hard back-to-back pulls.

















The next step in the process was to address the engine itself. The stock LT4 bottom end would be more than enough to handle our planned modifications, but the valvetrain was immediately upgraded with our full Cam Kit Plus and CNC ported cylinder heads. This combination upgrades all of the known “weak links” in the LT engine platform’s valvetrain, as well as increases both power and fueling. The customer did opt for our Stage 3 camshaft profile which is our “max effort” camshaft for the LT4 and provides an aggressive lope at idle while still maintaining excellent street manners and drivability. This camshaft when paired with our larger camshaft profiles makes for a very balanced powerband and high peak numbers.

For the bolt-ons on the engine, we went with our standard combination which included our 4” cold air intake system fabricated here in house, an ATI balancer with a 9.17” lower pulley and Gates belt, 2” Kooks longtube headers, and off-road connection pipes. The customer wanted to retain the OEM NPP system on the car for now. For supporting components on the build we included several items to ensure reliability and longevity such as a Moroso catch can with -10AN fittings using our line kit, a 180* thermostat, a set of NGK spark plugs, and much more. Lastly, a build of this caliber had to receive our billet valve covers with our coil relocation package to make the engine bay look as good as the car performs.











With the install complete it was once again time to hand the key’s over to our tuner to see what this ZL1 1LE will make on our Dynojet chassis dyno. With this combination we the 1LE made 831rwhp and 764rwtq on 93 octane pump gas with NO methanol injection on the vehicle. It made right at 14psi with this pulley combination and will make for one hell of a track experience. See the video below to view the dyno run that we captured while the car was here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f5D...ature=youtu.be



Check out more of our Feature Builds, Performance Packages and Products at our website https://vengeanceracing.net/index.html. We have a wide range of performance parts on our online store for your LS or LT build. Feel free to contact us with any questions at Sales@VengeanceRacing.net or by phone @ 678-513-7105. We look forward to hearing from you.


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