Can't break the LT1
 

90% of the threads on here are about people modding their LT1.
Why are there only a few about people blowing up/ breaking their LT1?

Installing a cam, heads, nitrous, blower, or turbo puts added stress on your motor. These things had to have broken some LT1s.

I ask this to help people better decide what mods are practical for their situation, and the consequences that come with them.

This may help to eliminate the bad rep that nitrous has.
Or stop someone from spending $2500 on a heads cam swap for their 140,000 mile motor.

Think of the people looking at the LT4 hotcam kit, they would probably feel more comfortable spending the extra money on a better setup if they knew they would not have to spend that money to fix their car.

Please, post up your story. What were your mods? what happend? what 90% of the threads on here are about people modding their LT1.
Why are there only a few about people blowing up/ breaking their LT1?

Installing a cam, heads, nitrous, blower, or turbo puts added stress on your motor. These things had to have broken some LT1s.

I ask this to help people better decide what mods are practical for their situation, and the consequences that come with them.

This may help to eliminate the bad rep that nitrous has.
Or stop someone from spending $2500 on a heads cam swap for their 140,000 mile motor.

Think of the people looking at the LT4 hotcam kit, they would probably feel more comfortable spending the extra money on a better setup if they knew they would not have to spend that money to fix their car.

Please, post up your story. what were your mods, what happend, what caused the problem?

Thanks.

Thanks.

The most common thing is spun rod bearings.

How did I break it? Head Gasket... at 250,000 miles. STOCK Opti, Never cracked the valve covers, jsut ran it stock with a McLeod Street Twin clutch and a 3.5" Driveshaft. Blew up THREE 10-bolts with it over ~100 passes at the track over 3 years. These engines are VERY durable in stock form.

I'm hoping for similar results with my 500+hp 396. Granted, we had to take a few extra steps to ensure durabliity all round... but I'll probably "upgrade" to a crazy turbo setup before this combo gives out (I'm hoping at least ;)).



Bolt-ons rarely cause problems.

A poor cam swap can kill bearings, but a vast majority of the time this is installer error.

Nitrous hits of 100 or less seems to have good reports... if it has some miles on it I'd just window switch it higher (say 4000) and maybe stick to 75. I kn ow that's not fun, but its realistic. Especially with the stock pump, which tends to go SOFT before it actually DIES. A Hobbs swtich on the fuel line (or a new pump :P) should help from nuking the engine.

You could do a small 6psi boost application, but with a stock block with heavy miles you're really just asking for trouble. Wait to do that install on a new engine IMO.

Best idea? Bolt-ons, drivetrain upgrades, suspension, and a stereo. :) Leave the engine for second last (paint/body should be last IMO... but everyone has to decide for themselves).

Whatever you chose to do...do it RIGHT the FIRST time... and no, that won't always be the cheapest/easiest route.

plenty of people have blown them. but if you take care of it properly and do required maintenance etc most last for a long time.

That, and I think most people build the motor to handle it, before they put big power adders on.

Is there an echo in here?

I suspect that you dont read much about folks breaking their engine because
most people will do research and ask questions before executing a particular
mod (or set of mods, or an engine rebuild), to ensure they're doing the right
thing (of course, that's not to say they wont overdo it after the fact).

As said most failures are operator error of some sort ranging from dirty installs to bad tuning, bad parts.

I did spin rod bearing in a stock shortblock a few years ago but it was cammed for like 35K miles and then the current heads and cam for another 6-7K and had something over 100K total miles on it IF the junkyard I bought it from was honest when they sold it to me as a 40K mile motor, oddly though seems everything they have is 40K miles. I believe if I had put a fresh oil pump relief spring in it when I did the heads and cam it would still be alive. I had some fuel system issues and such with that motor along the way and over the years some bad tuning it went through hell.

Keep the cams/rpms reasonable, the nitrous shots say 175 and below and the stock motor works increadibly well, BETTER than some of the junk guys are buying as performance engines even.

Far as milage, we cammed a friend's 160K mile former police car coming up on 2 years ago, is his year round daily driver and when we attended a big Impala gathering his cam only car 500 miles from home ran within .1 of a trailered Golen stroker car.

Another friend was spraying 175 shot at his heads and cam Impala for a couple seasons and only finally broke it when he got greedy and put in the 250 shot, nobody intelligent will blame the engine there, even he will admit he just went too big on the shot, operator error.

i ignored the low oil light sensor 3 years ago and it wasn't glowing orange for decoration. the main bearing was spun and ground down a shat load and the rod bearing was fused to it's self on the crank.... a 4000$ reminder to put 5$'s worth of oil in....

And that's my argument to keep sensors in working condition. Invariably,
you'll see the occasional "coolant level sensor light stays lit" threads, and folks
will say, "just disconnect it". I don't care if the sensor *is* $45, it's better
to spend that on a new sensor than $4500 on a new engine or having to
spend the weekend and money on an upper-end gasket set to replace a
blown head gasket (or whatever else).

reason i don't care about the low coolant sensor...is because of the temp guage, i could care less as long as it doesnt start overheating, on a hot hot day, mine will reach the first notch

Hmmm, operator error...

I guess thats what you could call what happened to my car. 145k stock block, was doing great with bolt ons and cam until i spun a bearing(s). Trans (stock trans/stock shift points) was slipping and rpms would jump to 6k between shifts. Racing the car and the motor gave out. At first i thought it was mainly because of the trans shifting so high, come to find chunks of a chewed up oil pan gasket and all rod/main bearings spun and eaten up. I had recently replaced the oil pump with a high volume, and the thing showed no apparent problems and lasted months. I guess somewhere in the installation, the gasket got torn, and eventually just got sucked into the pan.

The motor would have lasted much longer judging by the look/condition of the internals other than the bearings and cranks surfaces and the parts that were removed during modding (i.e. valvetrain, timing chain, etc.)

Years ago, I was driving my Porsche and a hose blew a small hole, thereby
leaking coolant out. The temp gauge rose a bit, then settled back down.
Eventually, the car ran like cr@p and so I pulled over and then noticed steam
pouring out from under the fenders. The cooling system was pretty much
empty at that point. The coolant temp sensor was reading the air around it,
since there was no coolant.

Y'all can do what you want - I'm keeping my senses and keeping all my sensors :)

good stuff. i plan on installing a 125 wet shot this weekend. my car has 135,000 miles on it. runs strong though.

You may not be old enough to remember when the cars we drove did not have sensors at all. I just wonder how we all did not blow up our motors?:D

The sensor is needed for people who are passive, drive their car and just put gas into it. For people like me that are active in their cars fluid levels, ect. we really don't need sensors, because we will spot a problem before a sensor does.

But I agree with you. The added insurance of a working sensor never hurts.:nod:

ive owned 3 LT1's...def great motors. everyone acts as if the lt1 is a 305ci compared to an LS1 and im not sure why. ive seen lt1's with i/e beat stock ls1's multiple times, including in my own cars. (DEF not bashing ls1's, i love ls1's and plan on purchasing one this summer). People need to give the lt1 more credit.

Or you could just check your fluids and do routine maintenace like they did in the olden days. :razz:

I put my procharger setup on about 20K miles ago. Its now got 135k on it running strong. A lot of it is in the tuning.

i blew my stock lt1 up with blowby..Formula350 and infinitebird can vouch for me..I had massive blowby

That's truly what i do in instead, hell, if it doesn't over heat ill just pop the cap once every other week or something to double check level. And if it was truly reading the air then its not physically possible for it to be "just a little hotter" That's why if you have an air pocket in the coolant the car WILL overheat

ive probably told you this about 3 times, but your car looks fuckin amazing:D