MWS and Superformance Build A Classic Ford With A CHEVY Twist!!!

Since 1993, Mark's Workshop of West Australia, or MWS, has been the western Outback's premiere leader in supercharger installs and in-house tuning. Not only a retailer and manufacturer of such superchargers as the Eaton-based unit for Holden's (GM) LS1 motor, but MWS has some 25 years of fabrication experience accumulated, and so they have the knowledge and resources to build and fabricate their own, full-custom assemblies. MWS also specializes in various V8 conversions, Euro-tuning and suspension and brake upgrades.

Today, MWS brings us something that a lot of Ford--maybe even Mopar--folks might consider "sacrilege," enough even to seriously consider making confession booth reservations for Sunday. The "unpardonable sin" of which we speak is the 427 AC Cobra kit car from MWS and Superformance, fitted with an LS7/T56 drivetrain. The car, as seen in this video, is an unfinished project running on a dry sump and race-fuel system, just to name a few.

As far as the kind of responses the Cobra has generated on YouTube, these vary from those who understand the nature of kit-car construction to those who are a bit more "in-the-wool," condemning and reminding us all that Chev motors in Ford race cars are deserving of no less than "great and severe punishment." But for those of us who understand that the beauty of a kit car is in its flexability of construction, the LS-powered Cobra is nothing less than a mechanical masterpiece.

So why does the "stigma" between Chevy and Ford continue to exist? Because some of us, in the world of hot-rodding, have chosen to climb under a rock; truth be very much told, we were all one of "those" at one time or another. Once you come out from under that "rock," however, you might be surprised what you were missing while you "cried and complained" about how the days of 289s in FIA racing are long-gone. Actually, MWS' Cobra could've worked just as well with a carbureted 289 mill, but we're damn glad that our Aussie friends have chosen to represent the "Chev dog" with this Chevy/Shelby lovechild.


Read more about this car at Chevy Hardcore!

Does history really repeat itself?

Does history really repeat itself?

How the LS design was inspired by the “W” motor of the late ‘50s/early ‘60s...

To understand why GM’s supercharged LSA motor is the performance piece that it is, one must first understand how the evolution and performance of the LS series as a whole is indirectly connected to Chevy’s first ever production big block, the “W” motor first introduced by Chev in 1958 as part of their large-truck/full-size passenger line-up.

Actually, the original 348 big block, Chevy’s notorious W-shaped motor, was as much of a mechanical/technological milestone as the LS series that was introduced by GM in 1997. In terms of valvetrain construction, the “W” motor was a motor ahead of its time, using parts and techniques that were pretty non-conventional by ‘50s/early ‘60s standards. These included an overhead cam, with pushrods that were used as reservoirs for the motor’s overall oiling system. The “W” motor shared in common with the 265 and 283 small blocks a valvetrain consisting of tubular steel pushrods tapping stud-mounted, stamped steel rockers, an innovative design which allowed Chevy’s 348 to rev well-past 6,000 RPM, a considerably high range for a big block. This rocker arm assembly also allowed Chevy to build future big block V8s with an inclined-valve design, a layout that would force the engine’s valves to open away from the combustion chambers and cylinder walls.

But where the true meat of 348, and later 409, performance lies is in the head and piston designs, which much later on would become true of the LS engine family. For example, Chevy’s W mill incorporated crowned pistons with a head deck design that deviated from the traditional perpendicular design.

The 348/409 series also deviated from the standard chamber-in-head design, placing the combustion chambers in the block instead. The idea behind this and the vertical spark plug layout that accompanied the non-conventional combustion chambers was that a more turbulent flame front could be produced within the chambers by forming a “wedge” shape between the piston crown and the chamber itself. In other words, instead of using flat-topped pistons, Chevy used piston “crowns” to compress the air/fuel mixture tighter, which would naturally make for a more turbulent engine-running dynamic. It was the flat-torque characteristics of the W motor that made it successful in large trucks and full-size passenger cars.

This “flat-torque” dynamic was also achieved by the 348’s offset valve layout, which would ultimately become the Chevy big block hallmark. The reason that this was true is that Chevy intended the offset valvetrain to build maximum brake mean effective pressure at relatively low-running speeds, which was how the motor built bottom-end torque.

Once Chevy would introduce what they called the “Mark IV” generation of big blocks, including the 396, 427 and 454 motors, not much would change from the 348/409 series, except that the Mark IV motors would eventually turn out to be substantially souped-up versions of the original “W” motor. In fact, the second generation of Chev big blocks maintained the offset valves, but where the new big blocks differed from the originals was in the return to an in-head chamber instead of those cast into the cylinders. The Mark IV big blocks also returned to the 90-degree, cylinder head-deck design, and with this and the new inclined valve layout, the unmistakeable W-shaped valve covers of the 348 motor were no longer needed, which meant Chevy could return to traditional, square valve covers on their big block series. The inclined valves were also accompanied by spark plugs that entered the combustion chambers at an angle instead of vertically; this new spark-to-valve combination made for even furthered performance at yet higher RPM ranges.

With the introduction of the LS engine series, not much changed in terms of the concepts of effective mean pressure and overall volumetric efficiency, except that the LS has a dry weight of somewhere in the 400-pound range, where the Mark IV big blocks had a dry weight of around 685 pounds, with the all-aluminum, ZL1 427 being the exception.

 Come to think of it, the LS engine, especially with the introduction of the Generation IV series in 2005, was and still is a computer-controlled version of the “W” motor. Both the LS and the original big block engines were head-and-valvetrain deviants; where the 348/409 series deviated from the 90-degree deck design of the conventional small block, the LS series likewise deviated from the conventional small block’s pentagonal, five-bolt head pattern, abandoning this for an oversquared, four-bolt design.

Like the W motor, the LS is also a deviant in terms of spark; where the W motor, for years, had used vertically-inserted spark plugs, it eventually abandoned the layout for one using angled plugs in order to improve combustion, and the LS series would abandon distributors all-together, introducing a relay-pack system known as coil-near-plug ignition.

Both the 348 and LS series introduced to the GM market new ways of designing/building bottom ends; with the introduction of the 348 big block, GM incorporated a then-new piston profile which included a “crown” for increased compression and flame front turbulence, while the LS family introduced the use of hypereutectic pistons and the 1-8-7-2-6-5-4-3 firing order, a cylinder firing-order that was more in-line with Ford’s modular and other late-model V8s that would be the LS’ contemporaries.

In almost every industry and every facet of life, it’s been said that history repeats itself; in the world of engine performance, the compare-and-contrast between the 348 and the LS motor stands as brilliant evidence of this idea.

- Sal Alaimo Jr., B. A. (7/26/11)

S. J. A.

Custom vans are back in style...

Custom vans are back in fashion...

And LS conversions make them that much more fun

In my previous discussion on why/why not to do an LS-conversion a Porsche, the two main arguments that I and others had developed in favor of the conversion was that even an LS1 motor in stock form put out nearly twice the power of a stock 911 motor with a weight advantage of at least 66 pounds. With this being said, I and several others had developed the argument even further that the stock LS1 motor was even more compact and therefore more efficient, both in geometry and performance, than the now-dated, flat-6 configuration that would have originally been found in a Porsche 911 or 930.

This all being said and considered, wouldn’t it be better to take an LS motor, with either forced induction or stock, and retrofit it into an Astro/Safari van rather than try to “massage” a stock V6 that is not only heavier and more space-consuming than an LS, but doesn’t even come close to an LS V8 in terms of cam profiles and head designs? The answer to that question seems obvious when looking at this LS-fitted, ’98 Astro van built by Stan out of Janesville, Wisconsin.

A few things, before the actual LS conversion, to note about this Astro van: the paint and body are clean and they appear bone-stock, which means that an LS-swap would be perfect since nobody would think any differently about the van at first glance. Astro/Safari vans are also mid-sized, which means that the under-space of the van is actually accommodating for even a conventional V8 swap.

Stan has retrofitted his ’98 Astro with an LS1 out of a ’99 Trans Am, along with a 3.73 diff in the back and BFG P255/60R15 treads all the way around. The trans is also out of the ’99 TA, and according to Stan, the only serious tech issue he’s ever had with the van is when he drove it out of state and the mass airflow sensor went out. According to Stan, this was a problem that was fairly easy to fix, since he had saved the correct VIN code that came with the powertrain; a GM dealer in Little Rock, Arkansas was able to identify the VIN and fix/replace the airflow sensor fast enough to get Stan and company back on the road.

Aside from this, Stan’s V8 Astro has had front wheel bearings put in it, along with a new parking brake cable, rear axle housing and brake pads and rotors. According to Stan, the conversion has accumulated a soft 20,000 miles on it since it was finished.

 And this is what seems to be most admirable about Stan’s LS van conversion, that it has V8 power for the streets while maintaining the integrity of the van itself, which of course means a delicate balance between performance and reliability. Like the LS-911 swap that we had discussed in our last entry, Stan’s LS-powered Astro takes-on the competition without being over-the-top. Let’s learn a lesson from his and others’ late-model motor swaps: ratted-out pro street builds aren’t always the best option.

- Sal Alaimo Jr., B. A. (7/12/11)

S. J. A.

The pros/cons of doing an LS conversion on a Porsche...

Why we should or shouldn’t throw-out the original

Pros/cons of a Porsche-LS swap...

Stuffing a V8 into a Porsche, whether a 911 or a 914, is definitely not a new concept, but with the invention of the LS motor, certain dynamics of this once common conversion have certainly changed.

When the LS series was first introduced by General Motors in 1997, LS-conversions in pre-LS cars were relatively uncommon. Actually, the closest thing to a late-model engine swap that could be seen in pre-1975 rods and customs was the then-common, LT1 motor from the ‘80s and early ‘90s ‘Vettes, and this was a trend that popped-up at hot rod meets and other kinds of car-buff venues during what seemed to be the late ‘90s, all the way into the early 2000s.

The V8 Porsche experience, on the other hand, is one that goes back 30-some-odd years, back to a time when V8 swaps in Luvs and Vegas were prevalent. Of course, many of these amateur engine swaps were “backyard” projects that were built mostly for street and quarter-mile use, but when V8 swaps in the mid-motor 914s became a reality in the ‘70s, it became clear to a lot of us that having an American V8 in a European road car was the best way to go. The 914 Porsche, in particular, was a hotbed for Euro-American motor retrofitting because of its mid-to-rear layout; Euro automakers had understood, for years prior, that a rear-to-mid motored car maintained the best center of gravity, and therefore handled the best on road courses and oval tracks. The problem that existed within the world of Euro performance was definitely not one of road-handling, since even Porsches had always been keen on this aspect of overall performance. The problem was that most Euro sports cars of the era simply didn’t have the brake horsepower to back-up their superb handling/cornering capabilities.

But there was also a paradox that was created by the Euro-American, small-car V8 trend, as several members of Sportscarforums.com have pointed-out: some water-cooled, V6 and V8 applications are not only more powerful than a lot of factory Euro motors, but they’re more efficient. As one forum member observes, the 3.0 liter flat engine that can be found in the 1980 911 SC only produces around 178 bhp at 5600 RPM, and is actually 66 pounds heavier than GM’s LS1 motor, despite the fact that the LS is a V8 while the Porsche motor is a flat-six.

Probably the most famous V8-powered Porsche 911 on the Web is the “Toy Rocket,” an ’80 911 SC with a supercharged, LS1 motor in place of the archaic flat-6. With the original motor in-place, the 911 SC can top out at around 139 mph; with the supercharged LS1 and stock, Porsche axles, the same 911 can run an 11.94 pass in the quarter-mile, while capable of doing 184 in 4th and over 200-mph in 5th. This kind of performance comes from an American-made, all-aluminum V8 that weighs-in at approximately 434 pounds, a considerable jump from the 911 6-cylinder’s rather heavy, 490 pounds.

Another key point that should be made about the LS block in general is that, no matter what kind of car it’s in, it’s geometrically small, which means that it’s universal in the kind of platforms that it can be used in. Technically-speaking, inline and flat-six motors are heavier and take-up more space than a V8, so bay space is actually being saved by doing an LS conversion on a 911.

The last point in this defense of doing an LS swap on a Porsche is the location of the motor in the car. As one member of Sportscarforums observes, the displacement of an LS1 motor (5.7 liters), because it is considerably larger than that of a Porsche flat-6, demands that the motor be placed slightly in front of the default motor location. What this means for road-handling, especially in the case of the 914, is that handling and cornering characteristics are actually optimized instead of hindered.

All-in-all, an LS conversion on a Porsche seems to make the most sense; not only does GM build an aluminum V8 that is lighter than a Porsche motor, but cubic inch for cubic inch, it produces twice the power within the exact same RPM range, and that’s without a supercharger. In fact, the LS1, in naturally-aspirated form, produces more than 50 bhp over a late ‘70s/early ‘80s 911 turbo; with a supercharger bolted-on, that same LS1 is capable of producing well over 500 bhp.

There’s no question of a doubt in my mind that there is a difference between American and German engineering, but there are pros and cons to both, and what V8 conversions in small, Euro cars has brought to the senses is that handling needs to back-up power. In this context, the LS series from General is a motor that almost seems to fit a 911 or 914 chassis perfectly, because it’s lighter and more compact than any other series of small block, while also being more technologically-advanced than previous generations.

- Sal Alaimo Jr., B. A. (7/10/11)

S. J. A.

John Devine and So-Cal Speed's LS7-powered '66 Chevelle...

A former GM-exec and a well-known rod shop build an LS7-powered Chevelle

Hot Rod magazine makes more than a sound point when they talk about the pros/cons of doing a custom conversion on an already-clean car. The pros are that not nearly as much money and labor are spent on bodywork and repairs; the cons are that a rare car that’s already straight to begin with is being cut-into, and money value on any car is automatically lost as soon as you replace the drivetrain, depending on what factory options the car came with.

But let’s not get any misconceptions as to how this whole thing works; when it comes to converting original cars, some pro builders just know how to do it the right way. Take former GM executive John Devine and So-Cal Speed Shop’s LS7-powered, ’66 Chevelle. The story behind this car is stunning. The car was actually bought in Portland, Oregon from the nephew of the original owner, the car having 15,000 original miles on it with a stock 283. The car would find its way to So-Cal Speed in 2004, where it would eventually be decided by Devine and So-Cal’s Pete Chapouris that an LS7/6-speed swap would be best for this standard but clean, 283-powered Chevelle.

The LS7 that would eventually find its way into the engine compartment is bone stock out of a Z06 ‘Vette, but as Hot Rod points-out, why would anybody need much more than 500-horse from a completely stock motor that’s meant to be driven daily just as much as it’s built to perform, and within the walls of a passenger car that was originally meant for everyday transport?

As evidence of the fact that clean, original cars have been being chopped and converted for years, Hot Rod cites Rod Saboury as a solid example, Saboury himself having had, during the early ‘80s, chopped and pro-streeted out a ’63 ‘Vette. At the time, Saboury had also encountered a great deal of flack for chopping-up an original car,

 but considering that it was also the early ‘80s, Saboury and other rod-builders of the time would not have had nearly as nice of a powertrain available as the LS series that has become so prevalent in hot rodding today. With that considered, and the observation from Hot Rod that spending a bit more on an already-clean platform is more efficient overall than restoring a beater

, doing an LS-swap on even a low-mileage car just doesn’t seem like that bad of an idea.

- Sal Alaimo Jr., B. A. (7/9/11)

S. J. A.

Doug Bingham's sweet '39 custom...

Two or more show awards can’t be wrong...

Doug Bingham’s custom ’39 steals the show

Whenever you go to a major car show and one out of 5,000 cars stands-out to you, that really says something about that car. That’s apparently how Rod Authority felt about Doug Bingham’s ’39 Ford. Out of several cars that had appeared at Temecula’s annual rod meet in the streets of the city’s “old town” section, this was the custom that most stood-out to them.

Much to the dismay of many Ford enthusiasts, Bingham’s ’39 is actually an LS conversion; powered by what is essentially a stock LS1 with a Weiand intake and EFI, along with an ignition from Street Performance, Bingham’s Ford is set up to run on pump gas while stealing both hearts and awards from many a custom rod venue. As a matter of fact, Bingham’s street rod, built by Southtown Street Rods of South Coffeyville, Oklahoma, has been the recipient of the “Fine Nine” award at Darryl Starbird’s Hall of Fame Nation Championship Rod and Custom Show in Tulsa back in 2007. It has also received the Builders Choice Award at the 2010 Goodguys show in Scottsdale, Arizona. In 2008, the beautiful custom was invited to participate in Blackie’s Frenso Autorama, and that same year it was chosen to be parked at Meguiar’s booth at the LA Roadster Show.

With these kinds of paint schemes and such prominent accolades, it’s really no wonder how Doug’s Bingham’s awesome ’39 coupe came to be one of the street rod scene’s top representatives. Also, Bingham’s car says something about how the hot-rodding scene as a whole has gravitated toward the LS and Hemi motors of the late-model performance world. With a show-quality finish combined with fuel-injected efficiency, the future of show rods is not hard to see within the reflection that beams bright off of this tangerine, ’39 Ford custom.

- Sal Alaimo Jr., B. A. (7/7/11)

S. J. A.

Westside Collision's LS1 Nova II...

The story of how Westside Collision in Lancaster “hopped-aboard” the LS train

Antelope Valley car show judges and other custom enthusiasts applaud the Nova II that forever created a protocol for hot rod-building

  The child of a bodyman from Northridge, California, I spent the beginnings of my teenhood trying to figure everything out. But what exactly I was trying to figure out were a little different from the concerns of most early teenagers. In this case, my 12-14-year-old mind was overly-busy trying to figure out different engine and trans configurations, because at that point in life, we do tend to be nubiles in the world of all things automotive. I had a lot of misconceptions in mind, back then, about cars and how cars work, the absolute best angles for building a drivetrain. But with time, a lot of my misconceptions would be disproved, and I would eventually come to be grateful for that education.

  One of the very first of my “bubbles” that would be “bursted” about cars is that anything that isn’t built in the backwoods with 8 cylinders or up is not worthy of a high-performance article like the very one that you are reading. I think, in retrospect, that that was a very bad notion for a young kid who’s into cars to have in his or her psyche, and I think that it was a notion that the adult gearheads in my life had to break, and, like so many of the cars that I was hooked-on, fast. This would first come to pass as I spent a lot more time around friends’ and family friends’ garages, all throughout the San Fernando Valley. Those were the places where I received what I consider to be my real education, by watching those men execute many different kinds of projects on many different occasions.

The “8-cylinder” notion was first broken, for me, at the random age of 14 when a stroll past a neighbor’s house revealed a few things: first, a Marina blue, ’66 Vette, second, a white mini truck that appeared to be a Chevy two-door Blazer with some very intriguing ground effects  and an appetite for speed (both the ground effects and the speed from the factory apparently!), and a Buick Regal, which apparently belonged to the guy with the Corvette, that had a round, black-faced speedo inside of it that read up to 160 mph, though something didn’t seem right about the white mini truck or the blacked-out Regal. There was something that was subtle but scary about the late-model performers, and that was my very first introduction to late-model performance, an introduction I can promise you I would never forget.

Skipping ahead to another incident that happened around the same time, dad and I had started to build my small-scale model of a ’70 Chevelle SS. I was also new to traditional muscle cars at that time, but dad, a previous Chevelle owner himself, seemed to have a knack for it. He knew better than I ever could which shades of black paint differentiated the seats from the dashboard, assuming that the car really was a 1970 and that the interior was factory-correct. Dad knew, for example, that between the flat black and the high-gloss, that it was the high-gloss paint that worked best for the bucket seats, while the flat paint looked best on the dash and door/roof panels. He also taught me that the difference between “Competition” and “Hugger” orange is that one goes on to the engine covers and manifolds while the other applies to body and interior. That was the first lesson that he had taught me in paint and bodywork, primer-prep and all, but dad’s philosophy behind building a car’s platform would not show itself until 11 or 12 years later.

It’s actually funny, because General Motors introduced the LS motor series in ’97, around the same time that dad and I were putting-together my cranberry-red, model Chevelle. At that time, the LS was a brand new, factory-built motor with a warranty and EFI, so the market of old iron with late-model drivetrains retrofitted into them was something that was non-existent at the time. Actually, most of what we were reading in Super Chevy and Hot Rod were tech articles about putting-together 2.02/1.06 valvetrains for conventional small blocks, along with various articles about head porting and body prep, for those hot rod builders who hoped to achieve a showroom finish in the sense of appearance. Come to think of it, the articles I read in junior high and the early part of high school were not too much different from the auto mags my dad and his friends were reading when they were kids, except that Centerlines were out-of-style by the late ‘90s/early millennium, V8 Vegas might have been replaced with V6 Cavaliers, and of course our generation of drag racers rarely brought primered “door-slammers” anywhere, even to the dragstrip itself. But as the concept of a modern “Muscle Car era” or a new-age “horsepower war” came closer and closer to reality, another reality also unfolded: the reality of retrofitting Vortec and LS engines, entire platforms as a matter of fact, into what “smog states” like California would call “Early” makes and models, those 30 years or older.

  In the spring of 2007, my dad had surprised me and the rest of our family with a ’64 Nova II, a solid hardtop car from the AV that was originally an Ohio-built model. Apparently, the previous owner of the car had started it as a pro-street project, but the quarter-mile car that was to become from the first-generation Nova never was completed. What my dad was left with was the leftover from that project, namely a blown-and-cammed 350 punched out to a 355, a GM 12-bolt rear and an outdated Richmond 6-speed that shifted like butter, quite literally, as the infamous “slop” from the Richmond gear box caused a lot of pain to the hot-rodded Nova as the car struggled to regain a powerband just from one gear to the next. On top of this, the car’s previous owner failed to mention just how many miles had been put on the blown, 355 motor after the last phase of the hot rod project had been completed. The previous owner had also failed to mention that if we actually did run the blower with the small-diameter pulley sold with the car, that there was just a slight risk involved in punching a hole somewhere at the bottom end of the engine itself, which would eventually happen anyway.

  After the 355 motor was history, a 4-bolt 350 that ran great, but wasn’t nearly as interesting as the pro-streeted 355 was dropped in, a Dominator Series 4-barrel eventually being replaced by an Edelbrock injection unit in an attempt to make the whole thing run evenly.

  If there was anything significant about the first fuel-injected small block to run in the Nova, it was the use of the fuel injection itself. Dad’s first attempt at using electronic injection in an original muscle car wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as the LS conversion that would later follow. Honestly, Edelbrock’s answer to “plug-and-play” and their definition of “bolt-on” fuel injection was a little bit of a hoax, but me and my dad wouldn’t figure that part out until much later, when Edelbrock’s hand-held adjustment module failed to calibrate for the profile of cam that the small block was running, causing the motor to either starve or flood, but never in-between.

  In that context, I think that dad realized before a lot of us that aftermarket fuel injection was a fantastic invention in theory, but it just wasn’t all that great in practice. It was actually my dad who first taught me this concept about aftermarket equipment/applications, and their uses in the high-performance craft. After that it was clear that GM factory “stuff” was really the way to go.

  This is where the conversation about the LS motor kicked-in, because the whole concept behind the conversion itself was that an old-school street car would be built with a late-model, factory-certified and developed street engine, a street engine that utilized GM’s best in terms of computer-controlled spark and fuel systems. The whole idea seemed to interfere with the very hot rod tradition, but no one could deny that high-tech drivetrains, because of their self-adjusting nature, are just that much easier to deal with in the way of prep and maintenance. Dad understood this, and so his mission became to do an LS1/6-speed conversion on his now “prototype” Nova II.

  The drivetrain in question would be transplanted from an ’04 Pontiac GTO, a car that didn’t last too long with GM’s American sector, though the LS1 motor with the ‘Vette Z06 intake and Trimec, T-56 trans was a perfect platform for a 1960s “econo” car that weighed 3000 pounds or less, back when it was still original.

  The other argument in favor of the LS-motor conversion in the Nova was that if a modern GTO could run, with the same setup, mid-13s in the quarter, then an early Nova, with the exact same drivetrain and power output, could easily pull-off low 12s to high 11s. With time, dad would send the motor out to be cammed with a Comp “Thumper” grind, and some intake and exhaust work would follow to bring the otherwise stock LS1 into the even-400 horse range. Otherwise, the unibody construction of the Nova II was the main cause of its “slippery” driving dynamic, and running the GTO drivetrain in the mid-sized car with its equally modern suspension components complimented the “hairball” factor of the whole driving experience.

  Another concept that was paid careful attention to in this conversion was the use of modern interior implements, such as white-faced, aftermarket gauges and late-model, GM seats in place of an original bench. But the most recent addition to all of these is a retrofitted air conditioning unit from Classic Air. Along with an aftermarket wiring harness from the Arkansas-based Speed and Performance, the custom Nova II has also been retrofitted with a ChassisWorks front-end with coil-over shocks and custom motor mounts. As far as hooking up the electronics of the car, Mark from Speed and Performance was especially helpful, and the system as a whole came together in the plug-and-play fashion that everyone had expected. Speed and Perf was also responsible for the installation and programming of the PROM, or onboard computer, as well as the header installation.

  What the idea behind the LS conversion does is reinforce a notion, and even a market, that is still pretty new. The idea of using factory-installed engines in hot rods was one that I could’ve told you was the most successful, even going back to the limited number of 427-powered, ZL1 Camaros that were ordered during the first generation of the F-body. But as far as using late-model platforms in pre-smog cars, that concept was made most clear by my dad and his Nova II conversion.

- Sal Alaimo Jr., B. A. (3/30/11)   

S. J. A.