anyone rebuild their lt1 but kept the factory displacement? thinking of going the off the wall rebuild and spend more money on the heads and suporting mods and suspenion work.

 

Yea
Measure the cyls and see how much wear. If not more than .010 go for it.Just run a china berry tree hone in it to break the glaze.
Get a set of file to fit rings.
Get the crank checked as GM puts some wierd sizes out and it may have differant bearings like +.001 or -.001 to make them come out right.
Get some Clevite "H" series bearings including cam bearings.
Have the block vatted and let the shop install the cam bearings. Make sure they check the cam tunnel for straight 'cause GM installs the cam bearings THEN line bores them straight.
New gaskets and ya are ready to rock.Well with your new bad *** ported heads with valve job and sprung up for the cam and a 218/224@50, ICL at 112+4 with about .600/.650 lift and ya will be making good HP and be as docile as a kitten.Go bigger on everything if ya want. Bigger heads and cam just makes more HP.
Get a mail order tune to get it running then get it dyno tuned.

 

Yes! I just had the block checked and light-honed and had the crank checked and polished. I put the stock pistons and rods back in with new rings and bearings. I did the clearance checks myself and got bearing clearances where I wanted them. I also did the assembly myself and saved a bunch. The car has run great for almost two years now.

 

I am debating on this, building it with my brothers and I, or leaving it up to a shop??
Steve

 

thanks for the info, there is a stock bottom end lt1 that runs 11.33 @ 118 so i would be happy with 12's and still pass emissions.

 

There is stock bottem ends running even faster than that. I believe Joe Overton has a customer's car running one of his cams, and some eb heads hittin high 10.8x or something close.

 

i'm just basically going to run a full forged 355 setup when this bottom end goes out. i may go ahead and get a block and parts all ready to go so i can just swap it out some weekend :-) 6 in rod 355 ready for nitrous haha

 

I forgot to mention,if ya got more than.006 oversize in the bores ya need to have the piston skirts knurled so they won't slap.
Those factory pistons when new had about .004 clearance and much over that they will slap like crazy.The hyper-u-craptic pistons wont like much slapping going on.