Anyone converted one of the Gen 3 V8 motors to a carb setup? Good, bad, ugly of doing this? I know Edelbrock makes and intake for them. Any better looking valve covers out there?
There is only good and ugly. Good because they make stupid power for cheap, ugly because the coils mounted on the valve covers. Coil relocation is as easy as making brackets and plug wires. The edelbrock kit works fine easy to hookup, the ignition box. Ig you get a complete pullout engine you can sell the EFI stuff to offset the 650 for the carb intake/box. Check out LS1tech.com for valve covers. There are a few nifty ones out there but non are "retro" looking.
I've seen some cool looking cast finned valve covers for the LS engine. Just can't remember where at the moment, sorry, but I know they exist.
Its very easy and with a small cam you can get 450hp out of them very easy. Check out this site for custom finned valve covers. http://www.yourcovers.com/valve_covers_10413.php Im in the middle of building an Iron 5.7 out of a 5.3 block. I had originally planned to go with the valve covers in the link and a matching air cleaner and running a carb. I opted to stay fuel injected for ease of tuning, drivability, and all out performance.
a friend of mine has some neat looking billet specialties fins.....seems like someone also has some corvette fins out too....
There are some good carbed LSx threads in this forum: http://www.ls1tech.com/forums/conversions-hybrids-28/ Cool thread on YB with carbed LSx engines, lots of pics: http://www.yellowbullet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=113019&highlight=carb
My model a has a gen 3 6.0 liter. I put a nicer set of heads, carb, and not too crazy cam and its an easy 500 hp. the only bad part is the coils stick out. but there are plenty of kits to hide or relocate them. The MSD 6-ls box is the one you want to use. It plugs right into the factory sensors and can be programmed with a laptop or has 6 pre-programmed curves that work by plugging in pills. The edelbrock ignition box only works off the pills. The pills tend to have too much advance for most motors.
GM has 'Chevrolet' valve covers without the coil mounts. Relocate the coils either behind the engine or down on the frame rail. Of course when going to carb, you can get a kit with a distributor, front housing and distributor drive. You can run the engine without all the electronic gismos.
FYI - Wegner Automotive also sells a distributor drive kit that drives a small block Ford distributor off the front of the cam, if you want to go all the way traditional. He designed it for oval track racing, but there's no reason it won't work for hot rods, too.
That is what I would like to do if I decide to go this route. Basically loose the computer stuff and keep as much HP as possible. I did notice on one of the above links that a bunch of people were getting rid of the coils and running a distributer. What does it take to convert to this set up?
to convert to a distributor you need a distributor (obviously), a different front timing cover (gm sells a kit), a set of plug wires, a regular coil, and some sort of ignition box.
The distributor setup is not cheap, but if money is not an object it's cool looking. You can buy coil covers, or relocate the stock coils too... http://performanceparts.com/performance_parts_images/edelbrock_4118.jpg
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