I know the Mach I and Cobra motors have 4V heads and our motors have 2V heads.

I'm still trying to understand the concept of heads. Is there a head kit for the LS1 to make it 32V? What kind of performance advantage would it give our motors?

 

Not sure if anybody makes 32V heads for LS1's, but they are available for LT1's at least. I'm sure there's somebody...

Check out http://www.araoengineering.com/. There's info, dyno charts etc.

TS

 

http://www.fbody.com/members/GreenMeany/Home.htm



Dunno where he got 'em, though - and still not sure how they would fit in the F4 engine bay ...



Britt

 

The ZR1's were 32 valve engines. I'm not sure of any of the specifics but that might be were the lt1 guys are getting the 32 valve setup. It was an aluminum engine with a dual overhead cam setup. here is a link to a site that talks about it -

http://www.zr1.net/ZR1_about.html

It claims the '93 to '95 ZR1's made 405 hp!!! I know thats the same as the ZO6's LS6 but that was in '93. Of course the LS6 does this in the old 2v pushrod style which is quite an accomplishment. And the ZR1 was pushing around $65,000 - double the cost of a base corvette. If the ZO6 was double it would be in the $90,000 range.

I do think it would be interesting to see a dual overhead cam, 32 v ls1 but I thought one reason gm used the pushrod v8 was because of clearance issues on the camaro and vette. correct me if i'm wrong.

 

Goto your book store, goto the car section, and open up a book that goes over domestic pushrod V8's with good internal pics.... Then look at pics of dohc engines... That should give you a general overview of the designs... You can imagine having a multivalved pushrod engine would be a feat. either alot of pushrods shooting around and/or forked rockers and such.. Let alone getting it right...

Look at this thread about GM's upcoming 3 valve head..

 

Those Arao/Dominion heads are pretty bada**. They're over $5000 though, not too cheap but if you had an LT1 and the money...

I've never heard of a 32v LS1 head though. Hell, I've never heard of aftermarket LS1 head. If you want a to throw some different heads on your car, they're going to made by GM...except maybe the C5R heads, dunno if GM or Katech makes them.

 

Here is a link to the Arao heads

http://www.araoengineering.com/Chevy/chevysmb.htm

These look awesome. I just wonder why they are such a secret. I didn't see anything about LS1 applicatins though. I wonder what it would do for the ls1.

And if its out there, why hasn't gm picked up the idea? reliability?

 

supposdily reliability and complexity... but now they have that 3 valve head coming out so.......

 

Cadillac uses a 4 valve LS based motor for the northstar. There's also a pic floating around of it installed in a Black F-body. Very sweet pics.

 

The Northstar was before the LS family of engines though.. I don't think there's any crossover between them..

I know they redesigned the Northstar to work in RWD apps..

The intake manifold between the Northstar and LS1 look very similar though.

 

the arao 32v heads are bad enough to make a 1000hp n/a engine with the right setup..............but they cost $5g and then there are other costs to make them fit/work properly.

they arent a secret, they are just way out of anyones price/sanity range.

 

The LT5 is also WAY wider than the LT1 and shares NOTHING in commont with the LT1/4. I believe that the LS6 is actually slightly superior, which it should be since the LT5 was developed in late 1988-89 with inferior technology. If you want to spend $20k on a motor and custom fabricate A LOT then it would be good for its cool factor and thats all.

The Dominion heads are available for the SBC yes, but theres only 2 people working on the project. Unstable Bob and some other guy and work is still in progress more than likely. I think the 3v heads that GM's coming out with will do you LSx boys even more good since they're supposed to bolt right up to any LSx block. Dont know when they'll be available but there is a thread in the 5th gen forum for those interested.

 

After thinking about it I realized they were completely different motors. I should have corrected myself. I guess I got side tracked on the Araon heads topic (which won't fit an LS1 anyway so thats not worth much to us but oh well).

Just out of curiousity, the Aron site says an intake has to be made. So there is no intake manifold that bolts to these heads? Wouldn't there be clearance problems / performance problems with getting a custom sheetmetal intake to work with an lt1 f-body. I know were kicking a dead horse but its interesting to talk about. Just sounds like there is to much to contend with