I was looking through some stuff for LS1s and came across a carb intake manifold that you can put on your LS1. I never knew that you could change your LS1 to a carb engine. What would this do to the engine, in what ways would it help it out? Would you see any performance gains from this or anything? I thought this was pretty neat so i was just wondering about it.

 

There is a write up on this intake in the september 04 popular hot rodding.
Good info and what you are looking for.

 

Yes, Edelbrock currently has the LS1 intake built for a carburetor, and they sell it with an MSD ignition box that allows you to still use the LS1 coil packs for the ignition system. Pretty slick setup if you ask me.

I guess the advantages would be in self "tune-ability", vs. the EFI system which requires potentially expensive programmers / programs. Then any old Holley carb (or whatever) will bolt on, and you can jet accordingly how you want (and you don't have to worry about O2 sensors, TPS, MAFS, and stuff like that).

Maybe it's not going to be the most popular or common thing for guys to do to their 4th-gens, but it's going to make it a million times easier to bolt an LS1 into an old hot rod / muscle car, since you won't have to worry about the elaborate wiring harnesses necessary to hook up a fully electronic LS1.

 

so does this eliminate the need for all the electronics such as the PCM and such? If so, would it be easier to do this if you were looking to do an engine swap from a V6-LS1? And wouldnt it be easier to add things like long tube headers and remove the cats if you dont have to worry about O2 sensors and stuff like that?

 

The one that phr did their testing with was a gm performance parts unit. I thought edelbrock and msd did the timing ecu and thats it.

 

Exactly!

All you need is the MSD ignition box, but that shouldn't be any harder to hook up than it is on a normal carb'd engine.....basically all you'll need is a power supply for it?!

And yes, LT's won't affect O2 sensors, since you won't have any O2 sensors!!

 

http://www.edelbrock.com/automotive/man_chevy_ls1.html

You might be right though.....there's a good chance GMPP has the same thing as well?

 

yeah I just looked at the mag and it looks different the edelbrock one. There is no divider in the carb area it is wide open. They dont list a part # in the mag.
It is a gmpp intake.

 

so lets say im going to be doing an LS1 engine swap soon, and i was planning on adding some long tubes and removing the cats and everything that will affect the computer and all that other stuff...are yall saying it would be a lot easier to get the carb intake manifold to do the swap? From what im hearing it would be a whole lot easier.

 

In the article, it lost power with the carb.

 

how much did it lose...i looked somewhere just now and it said it was pretty close to stock.

 

Yeah it lost a whopping couple of ponies and a small amount of torque. No big deal.
But the biggest item that no one wants to talk about is the fuel mileage and the driveability. I would dare to bet tha you could take a 25mpg EFI LS1 and turn it into a gas guzzling 12-14mpg car with this outfit. OBD II pcms do a great job of tuning for 14.7 air fuel for economy while doing normal driving. And let's not even talk about going out and cranking it up in cold winter weather.
Carb could be a good mod for a drag or other race application car and it sure will make the retrofit swaps a piece of cake in comparison to the EFI set-up.
Just depends upon what you plan to do with the car. It's not the cure all.

 

yeah i never did think about that. Cold weather wouldnt really be a problem for me. I never did think about the mpg thing though, that would be a big change. But like you said it would make it a whole lot easier to drop in and to tune rather than having a computer.

 

They are comparing stock LS1 w/ EFi to stock LS1 converted to carb, right? I think the whole idea behind swapping, would be to add a cam and some internal mods as well. Which would in turn accomadate the carb.