I blew up the motor in my 94' Formula. It's basically trashed but a few months before that my brother had a slight run in with a wall getting on the freeway with his 94' Z28. His engine was still good so I pulled it out and I'm going to rebuild it. My idea was to upgrade the LT1 to the LT4 with the kit that Summit Racing sells, and then supercharge it with probably a 6lb blower to be on the safe side, and top it off with a 50-100 shot of NOS. The problem is I don't know where to get started with the rebuild now that the engines out. I see that Summit sell a rebuild kit for the engine for about $530 but will those pistons and rods and everything that comes with that kit hold up with everything I want to do, or not. If anyone can recommend a start for me let me know. I don't want to build this engine and blow it up after a few thousand miles.

 

What exactly did you do to your current engine?

 

I get the feeling you are on a pretty tight budget. In that case, forget a blower/nitrous combo. Any thing but very high quality (and expensive) parts with meticulous assembly will not stand up to that kind of setup. OTOH, even a stock motor can last for a reasonable time with a 100-150hp nitrous shot. A few well selected uprades will allow more nitrous to be used. And an otherwise OEM quality motor can be superchraged as long as high quality/low compression pistons are used.

To give you specific advice I'd like to know if you are planning a blower, nitrous, or are really interested in doing both.

Rich Krause

 

I would rather have a blower over NOS, I don't plan on racing it everyday but I want to now that I'll always have that extra power without having to fill up a bottle. I also heard that a blower could actually extend the life of an engine and improve gas mileage alittle if you don't have a lead foot, I'm not sure if thats true, but that's what I read.

For the other question, I blew up my last motor because I blew the head gaskets, replaced them, went out racing and blew them again. It wasn't as bad the second time, I could actually start the car and I had to add coolant every couple of weeks. Because I needed the car to get to work I didn't have time to fix the heads the second time so I thought I would drive it until I had time. Bad move on my part. After awhile I heard a knocking noise but it sounded like the tranny. I took it to a mechanic friend of mine and he thought so too, until he listend closer and said it was a rod bearing, I asked how far I would get before my engine was toast and he said 10 feet. I lived 5 miles and took my chances. 1 mile up the road I heard a big bang and white smoke out the tail pipes. Took the engine apart and I saw I twisted 2 push rods, one of those 2 broke in half, chipped my cam, scratch my crank, and took a nice big chunk out of the cylinder wall. I learned my lesson on racing though.