BANG FOR YOUR LS BUCK
A few years ago, a colleague of ours spent more than a few bucks to elevate the performance of his LS1-powered fourthgen Camaro SS. It was a bolt-on extravaganza, with longtube headers, a snazzy-looking intake manifold upgrade, and a larger throttle body, along with a cold-air intake and more. The engine looked great under the hood and sounded even better through the headers.
On the chassis dyno and with proper tuning, power to the tires definitely increased, but the gain wasn’t dramatic. Worse, the car’s crisp street performance was dulled like your mom’s old caravan down a cylinder or two. To put it nicely, it was a dog, particularly at low rpm, where what little torque the LS1 made down there all but evaporated.
It’s all because our buddy took the traditional bolt-on approach to building horsepower—the things we all grew up reading about when people were trying to coax an extra 25 hp out of a smog-laden two-barrel small-block. Opening up the restrictive intake
