Thoughts on allowing Chevy LS Motors in Late Model

FLORIDA STOCK CAR RACING KARNAC's FLORIDA STOCK CAR RACING
1

With GM now providing a dedicated short track LS crate motor (CT525).

and…

The Nascar K&N Pro Series East using a carbureted LS2, the ASA transcontinental series using LS3 type motors, some midwest circle track
and regional dirt series allowing LS motors.

Wondering what your thoughts are on allowing LS based motors in late
models. The FAST series and others allow different combinations. Could
this be an option.

The old ASA Delco series LS1’s made good power and torque with many
being used all year.

These motors have been extremely reliable in other forms of racing and are
capable of making competitive power with little work. They can be built
in either iron block or alum. block configurations.

A new 5.7 LS6 long block (2002-2004 Z06 motor) can be bought for as little as 3300. With the GMPP
4 barrel manifold, 650 HP Holley and headers this combo would make about
440-450 HP without touching anything internal.

I think these motors can be very cost effective for the circle track competitor.

Not suggesting they should be the only option, but should start phasing
them in.

What Da Ya think?

2

Anybody have an opinion about this?

track officials?

3

why not transition to fuel injection?

4

Sure, both would work, the ASA Transcontinental motors are injected
as well as some of the midwest series motors.

5

Well, my personal opinion is that the 400-450 hp range would be ideal for a car that has very limited adhesion (via hard narrow tires and unsophisticated chassis) so that driver skill is the limiting factor. If you were around back in “the day” like I was, you’ll remember that racing was indeed very exciting when those kinds of hp #'s were state of the art. Put a motor like that in a modern chassis with sticky rubber and I think the “racing” would be about like watching paint dry. Parity sucks!! Racing is supposed to be a CHALLENGE. Me, I’m what you’d call a racing purist, I could care less what brand the motor is or who built it, I want to see RACE cars driven by race DRIVERS. Different strokes for different folks.

6

Why not? Look at the technology and power that new Toyota Late model motor puts out.

7

I agree Ted. Remember I come from back in the day when you built your own car/engine. Too much parity today. Spec/Sealed engines (And a lot of them have been tampered with), store bought chassis and so on. Who around here (central florida) is running a Toyota LM engine? Like with the E-Mods, It’s like watching grass grow and using a egg timer to clock them! Besides who around here would have the knowledge or equipment to tech them? They would have to be a stand alone class.

8

Yeah Dave, you and I are really on the same page when it comes to most of this stuff. Me, I never could stand the whole “tech” deal. I was a poor boy, cheating was not something that I had the resources to deal with and, being pretty much a one man operation, the idea of having to hang around after a race and tear my engine down and have to put it back together again… well, that just wasn’t something that I could deal with. I have always believed in keeping the rules as simple as possible with the goal being to limit the effectiveness of cheating up motors and spending big dollars to get the last possible amount of power by such things as limiting the motor’s ability to BREATH via small carbs etc. and severely limiting the ability to put the power to the ground by putting a cap on tires and chassis. An added benefit to having WAY more power than one can hook up is that engine life increases exponentially as you aren’t leaning on it nearly as hard so you don’t have to use mega dollar parts to achieve reliability. My personal journey led me to the world of Legends cars which had most of the characteristics that I was looking for. Where I stand today, my first love has always been traditional (non-winged) sprint cars and it just makes me ILL to see the huge amounts of money that one has to spend to play that game when you think about what it COULD be like if they’d just CHUCK those monster gumball 20 some inch tires and go back to the 10 or 11 inch rubber they ran in the 60’s and 70’s. Can you imagine how much life you could get out of a motor if you could almost never use full throttle and how much better the racing would be?

9

Picked up a Port City LM chassis,

… maybe we can get a local track (NSS) to let us
do a little R&D for them (guinea pigs) and let us run with an LS motor.
(have a bunch of LS parts laying around)

after 20 years of road racing, might just try a little oval track.