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By Lance Nist - Photos by Lance Nist, Ro McGonegal - 11/15/07
McGonegal had this LS1 crate engine in enough shrink-wrap for a mummy for about seven years. The maharaja of GM Performance Parts at the time said “yeah, yeah, but we gotta get some major ink outta this, right?” Many, many moons passed with not so much as a strangulated peep from the frosty cubicles in Grand Blanc about the disposition of the engine they gave him.
The years marched on, eight of them to be exact. When he was editor of CHP, they had been doing a freight-car load of LS dynamometer tests, but not one of these combinations had turbochargers nuzzling the cylinder heads. Superchargers were the hot deal. Nitrous was a bolt-on. Turbos meant fabricating stuff you might never use again. Months slipped away. Jobs changed. Shit got lost in cyberspace.
Then the middle-aged loon grokked on two. Twins. Turbos. Enough grunt for a Cat D9, Top Fuel power, and even respectable fuel mileage were the only mandates. Yo, who be smokin’ ‘nat crack?
McG’s purloined LS1 went to the engine-building experience of veteran Dave West in Escondido, CA. But first, Hank the Crank (HTC) blessed the Lunati rotating assembly. Hank thought we’d need a couple handfuls of HTC billet main bearing caps, though. After Hank installed the SFI-approved Fisher Concepts Vector vibration damper, he balanced the assembly and sent the guts south to West’s shop.
