Engine Power Featured Projects

Engine Power Builds

Parts Used In This Episode

Summit Racing
Manual & Electronic Boost Controllers
Summit Racing
Summit Racing Boost Control Solenoids
Summit Racing
Summit Racing Exhaust Tubing Mandrel Bends
Summit Racing
Summit Racing Oil Cooler Block-Off Plates
Summit Racing
Summit Racing Turbo Crossover Pipe Kit
Summit Racing
Summit Racing Turbocharger Hot Side Combo Kit
Summit Racing
TrickFlow TFX Fuel Injectors

Video Transcript

[ Frankie ] You're watching Powernation!

[ Frankie ] Today on Engine Power LS stands for lots of spooling as we grab a five-three from the junkyard and stick a big ole turbo on it. [ Pat ] We show you how to do it the safe way and the right way without blowing it up. [ Music ] [ Frankie ] Welcome to a pretty unique episode of Engine Power because today we are doing something we have never done before and that is the infamous junkyard turbo LS. Now these engines have been around since the '90s, and since then people have been pulling them out of junkyards and slapping big ole honkin' turbos on them and making pretty impressive numbers. Now we've never really done it ourselves, honestly because it's a little too Molly Hatchet for us. Today we are gonna tackle this and we're gonna show you how we would do it. As our base we have a 5.3-liter LMG from a 2009 Silverado. This came from a local junkyard. So this is exactly how we got it. It didn't have a front drive. We put an electric water pump on it. It has no e-c-u, no harness, and we know absolutely nothing about it. [ Pat ] And we are not even gonna touch it. We are even leaving the displacement on demand in it. We are gonna be dynoing it just like it is, but first we have to see if this thing is any good. So we're gonna pull it in the dyno room. Do a compression test on it. See if we have all eight holes. If that's good we are going to make a dyno pull on it to see if it lives so we can get a baseline. After that the gloves are off, but we're gonna show you how we are gonna make it safe and we are going to make it so it runs on boost and see what happens. It's supposed to make big power but it might not do it as cheaply as all your buddies say it does or the guys on the internet. Let's get it in and see what it does. [ Frankie ] In order to get our LS running we actually need an e-c-u and wiring setup, and it did not come with the engine. They actually just cut the entire harness off. So to make it much easier we're just gonna jump straight to the aftermarket, and we actually went to Haltech and got one of their Nexus Rebel LS EFI systems for our Gen-4 LS. They make these for both the Gen-3 and the Gen-4 and it's all based around their Nexus e-c-u. This has a ton of cool features. It has a nice, hard aluminum case, battery and ground connections that are large, an internal four bar map sensor. It has O-2 control, boost control, and nitrous control, and something that is pretty unique about this e-c-u is that it has a built in power distribution module. What that means is it has four 25-amp outputs that can be pulse width modulated or set up to have current protection on them. Another cool thing that this unit has is built in wi-fi. So you can do all the setup and tuning with your laptop and the included u-s-b cable. So you can use Haltech's NSP software or on your smartphone you can use the Haltech Connect app and actually do it all straight from your phone. For ease they also made the harness extremely easy to plug 'n play. It's a very high quality harness but they have put a ton of breakouts in it. If you're using a Gen-4 we have all the adapter harnesses for our engine. We have an EB-6 injector harness, the drive-by-wire throttle body harness, the map sensor adapter harness for the Gen-4, and the oil pressure adapter harness for the Gen-4. We also got a pedal adapter harness to run a Corvette style pedal position sensor that we need for the drive-by-wire. If you order the Gen-3 kit it comes with all the same stuff but specific for the Gen-3 LS engines, and it's really easy to swap back and forth. All you have to do is change out the adapter harnesses but you don't have to rewire your entire car. We're gonna get this harness installed, which shouldn't take long, and have this engine running pretty soon. All the adapter harnesses plug right into the stock junkyard sensors, and with the e-c-u mounted the engine is wired up lickety split. [ Pat ] Because we got our engine out of a salvage yard that can create a few problems for us because the engine has been sitting. Fuel will evaporate and create gum and varnish in the entire system. So before we run this thing we're gonna dump in some Berryman B-12 Chemtool. This is a fuel injection cleaner, and what it's designed to do is eliminate all that varnish and gum in the entire fuel system from the tank, lines, and anything that's in the engine especially the injectors. If you don't have clean injectors the engine won't run properly. B-12 Chemtool comes in a couple of different sizes. This one, which will treat up to 21 gallons, and also a larger one that will treat motorhomes, s-u-vs, things with larger fuel systems. You can put this in at one ounce per gallon. It is catalytic converter and O-2 safe and will help make things more efficient. We know nothing about this engine. So one test we want to do before we start it is a cranking compression test. With all the spark plugs out we'll check each cylinder individually to quickly determine the condition of the engine. All eight cylinders have between 200 and 210 p-s-i. So that's a good indication it's in decent shape. What we'll do next is throw a new set of spark plugs in it and run it. We still don't know if it has good oil pressure yet. So that's next. We have our junkyard 5-3 up and running. We didn't even bother taking the tags off of it that came from the yard. The compression was good, the leak down was decent. We literally put some fresh oil in it and started it up. How'd that Haltech work out? [ Frankie ] I'm running the app here for the Haltech e-c-u cause it connects via wi-fi. Watching all the stuff on this it started right up. It's super close on fuel trims, within two or three percent, which is perfect. Oil pressure looks great on there. It's a junkyard engine. Who knows what to expect? It seems to run fine. We're gonna find out and hopefully it doesn't shoot any parts out. It's up to temp. Let's make a hit and see what it does. [ engine revving ] [ Pat ] 353.4 horsepower. You have to read that part. [ Frankie ] Right at 5,500. It's right at the peak but it's definitely cresting over. [ Pat ] 370.6 pound feet of torque. [ Frankie ] Right at 4,600. Truck engine, low-ish r-p-m. For a bone stock o-e-m engine that's actually pretty solid. [ Pat ] Oil pressure went up the whole time. We're gonna make a backup pull. Pedal works nice out there. [ engine revving ] [ Pat ] Smooth as glass. I think it's gonna make the same power. 353.7 and 368.6. [ Frankie ] Normally this would be where we pull it apart and start putting parts in it but we're not gonna open it up at all. [ Pat ] I don't think it's gonna be $500 bucks though. [ Frankie ] Sadly they're never $500 dollars. Up next! [ Pat ] We give our junkyard engine a bath so we can put some new parts on it and send it on the dyno.

[ Frankie ] We got our 5-3 outside cause we're gonna give this thing a quick bath before we do our upgrades. We're gonna hit it with some degreaser, scrub it, and pressure wash it. We'll give the engine a generous soaking with Berryman Engine Degreaser and give it a quick and dirty scrub to help break up all the stuck deposits and gunk. All the ports are blocked or taped off. So we aren't afraid to blast it with a pressure washer during the rinse. [ Pat ] With the engine about as clean as we can get it now it's time for the fun part. We went on Summit Racing Equipment's website and got the cheapest turbo system that we could find, but it comes with a lot of good stuff. Actually everything on this side of the table. It starts out with a very nicely constructed turbo manifold, a couple of 60mm waste gates, a VS Racing 78-75 turbo with a 1.25 AR, and all the hardware to get everything hooked up. It even includes one exhaust gasket because you don't even have to pull the driver's side exhaust manifold. Lucky for us we don't have to because it's got a couple of broken bolts and we don't want to deal with it. [ Frankie ] That's a lot of cool parts and a lot of good eye candy to look at for a great price but there's a lot of other stuff you actually need to complete your turbo kit. It's not just the turbo itself. So we need a crossover pipe to connect the two manifolds. So we have the matching one from Summit. We need intercooler piping and couplers to run our intercooler. We need a blowoff valve on the charge piping so we're not trapping all that boost pressure in front of the throttle blades. We need bigger injectors. So we have a set of 80 pound Trick Flow injectors because we need a lot more fuel to go with the extra power. We need a cooler spark plug so we're not detonating inside the cylinder. We need lines and fittings to run and return oil from the turbo. And you could run the waste gates right on the spring pressure but if you wanted to do something a little bit cooler you could run a boost controller, which adds a little bit of cost. Whether you're talking about a manual one or electronic that's stuff you have to factor in. So we've got to do a little bit of teardown and then we're gonna be making some boost. [ Pat ] We are only pulling a few pieces from our 5.3-liter, but the first one is the oil pan. So we'll drain the fresh oil we just put in, which is already pretty dark. We are dropping the pan to weld in a permanent oil drain bung, but we are doing it carefully since we don't want to waste our turbo money on a new gasket. [ Frankie ] None of them might tight. That one's good. LS exhaust manifold bolts are notorious for breaking like the one already broken on the driver's side, but by some miracle the passenger's side bolts came out easy. Junkyard LS with no broken exhaust bolts on this side. That's a win! [ Pat ] The Summit turbo manifold goes on with our new exhaust gasket and our ARP manifold bolts. Then the VS Racing turbo can be mounted, followed by both of the Summit 60mm waste gates with the four pound springs already installed. They will just dump into the open air for now on the dyno. This stainless crossover pipe is specifically made for this manifold setup and should clear most transmissions. Plus it has multiple slip connections to make it easy to install in a vehicle. [ Frankie ] With our oil pan relatively clean we can step up several drill bit sizes to create a thirteen-sixteenths inch hole for this Summit Racing aluminum Dash-10 bung to be welded in. We prefer a permanently welded oil pan fitting but if you don't have access to a welder you could use a bulkhead fitting or take it to a local shop to have it welded up cheaply. With the welds still cooling we'll slap our oil pan back on. We're using the o-g gasket, which was actually in great condition. We will change the oil filter crossover on the side of the pan for this Summit Racing one that has an eighth inch NPT port to feed our turbo pressurized oil through an Earl's Dash-4 line. A matching Dash-10 line connects our oil drain, and that simple install concludes most of the work on the engine. [ Pat ] Up next, big boost Bill Lutz is in the house with his bad ass blown Camaro.

[ Frankie ] Here in Engine Power we love horsepower and we love fast cars, and today we have the chance to look at both. [ Pat ] We have an absolute monster in the shop. This is an alcohol injected blown Camaro, and we have the owner, Mister Bill Lutz of Lutz Racing. Tell us about what you have brought us. [ Bill ] It's a '67 Camaro that I've owned for over 30 years. This car went from, when I first got it it would run in the nines. I drove it on the street obviously. Drove it on the street until went a quarter in the sevens. At that point in time it had a Gene Fulton all aluminum 615, and we could still drive it back then. Today it's got a Brad Anderson 521 Hemi, and this is where you end up after 30 years. You've got something that makes 4,100 horsepower. It goes really fast! Currently today we've been 3.74 at 203 in the eighth, and in quarter mile I've been 5.80 at 250-ish roughly. The Hot Shot's Secrets, I call them partners. I don't call them sponsors. We're really partners in this together. We were having an issue burning push rods up at a rate that was unbelievable. It was always burning the tips off of them. A good friend of mine told me, I got a buddy of mine that works at an oil company and he said he'd like you to try their product. So out of that comes the 60 weight Alky oil that they make today. We've never burn a push rod since the day we put their oil in this motor. If somebody breaks I will sit there until they literally make me stage this car cause I want to race you, I want to beat you. I don't want a race given to me. I probably got 30, 40 people running this oil now in their motors at the racetrack for that reason. It started out as something to keep us from burning push rods but in reality it's one of the best things we've ever done. [ Frankie ] That's what we love about Hot Shot's Secret is the tag line, Powered By Science. Those guys do a ton of work with racers like yourself to make a product that not only solves problems like that but they work with them to handle their needs. Whether it's engine, transmission, or rear end. [ Bill ] When you make stuff that can make the big rigs run a long, long time. There's diesel trucks out there that have some additional filters on them with their oil that literally run their oil for over a million miles. What you find out is when you add in the synthetic oil that we run and then you add in the Everyday Diesel Treatment and all that you'll start to see the numbers on the dash for your fuel mileage. It starts changing and you're like wait a minute. Why am I getting an extra one to two miles per gallon? Why are we going an extra 5,000, 10,000 miles on oil changes? It's all because of the quality of the product itself. It's crazy to think that an oil could do that but it does. [ Pat ] The benefit of science and technology. Bill, thank you very much for bringing this by. I know you're a busy man. You go to a lot of races but we thank you for bringing this by. This is super cool. [ Bill ] I appreciate it guys, and hopefully we can get you out to the race that we're at and I'd love to have you in the pits so you experience it first hand at a race. [ Frankie ] Coming up, we finish up the turbo system on our junkyard 5-3 and we show you a little boost goes a long way.

[ Frankie ] We have gone ahead and got our 5.3-liter LS back in the dyno cell exactly how it was before except with a big turbo on it. We've gone ahead and finished out the turbo system. We've added a four inch down pipe. We've added our turbo snuggy. We've plumbed our waste gates through our single valve boost controller. We've added all our charge piping and our dyno intercooler, which is actually just a pull out intercooler from a Duramax, Summit 50mm blowoff valve, and we've added an intake air temp sensor into the charge piping for our e-f-i system. We don't have to actually buy a higher bar map sensor because the Haltech Rebel LS has a four bar map sensor built in. So all we have to do is plumb that to the manifold. I'm gonna go ahead and get the e-f-i system and Pat is going to change the oil. Now that the engine's back on the dyno we're gonna give it a fresh oil change, and that means put a new filter on. Before we just ran it like it was from the junkyard. So we're gonna put a new filter on and what we picked up are Wix XP Extended Performance Filter. These filters are designed to protect engines up to 20,000 miles. We actually took our filter cutter and cut one apart that hasn't been run yet to show you the construction. In the bottom of these is a spring that holds the filter off the bottom, and in the bottom there is also a bypass valve. If this filter becomes completely plugged it will still supply the engine with oil. It has a hybridized synthetic fiber material that will filter out to 99 percent of contaminants. It also has metal ends and it has a silicone anti-drainback valve. Very well constructed filter. What we've gonna do is get this back on and get this engine running with our new filter and oil. [ Music ] [ Frankie ] We talked earlier about boost controllers but in today's Summit Tech Tip we wanted to go over the different types and how they work. The first is a manual boost controller. This is a "T" that goes in between manifold pressure source and the bottom of the waste gate and restricts flow. So if you have a five pound spring in your waste gate and you give this thing a couple of turns it might take six or seven p-s-i for that spring to allow the waste gate valve to open. A single valve electronic boost controller works in a very similar fashion but it is pulse width modulated by the e-c-u, and it vents that manifold pressure off before it reaches the waste gate. So you can vary this anywhere from spring pressure up to as much as the system will make. A dual valve electronic boost controller actually works by adding pressure to the top of the waste gate. So this is either from a manifold pressure source or a fixed pressure source like a CO-2 bottle. One valve will fill and add pressure and one will vent it or take it away. This is extremely variable depending on what you want to do and what boost you want to run. All three of these have their place and their application but if you have any questions about which one will be right for yours you can talk to the experts at Summit Racing Equipment and they'll get you sorted out. Turbo LS, first start. It's exactly like it did before, which is good. [ Pat ] Right now it shouldn't know it has a turbo on it. [ Frankie ] That's the good thing about turbos is that driving around the engine acts pretty normally and then you get into boost and it starts making all kinds of power. [ Pat ] It looks like I'm texting somebody but I'm not. I'm actually looking at the boost control. [ Frankie ] The Haltech Connect app, you can do a lot of stuff from that. It's actually really cool! You got our boost target programmed in there somehow? [ Pat ] Yeah, I don't want to kill this thing. Remember this is a junkyard engine. It hasn't been apart, the heads haven't been off, the rods and pistons have not been out of it. [ Frankie ] And we are on pump gas, which is as we've always said kinda finicky fuel. [ Pat ] That's the big limiter. [ Frankie ] We're gonna be pig rich and low on timing but we're gonna see what we can make here. Got boost! [ Pat ] Air/Fuel looks good. I'm watching it as it's going on the screen. [ engine revving ] [ Pat ] That was glass smooth. I think it made pretty big torque. [ Frankie ] For a 325 cubic inch engine it's making 524.5 pound feet and 512 horsepower right at 5,500. [ Pat ] How much boost-ation did that have? [ Frankie ] Peaking at 6 p-s-i. [ Pat ] That's what the target was. [ Frankie ] We have a four-ish pound spring in there and a little bit of boost control on top of it so we can vary it however we want. [ Pat ] Make another pull and we'll see how she looks. [ Frankie ] Do another one just prove this thing is gonna live. [ Pat ] That Haltech is unbelievably good control. [ engine revving ] [ Pat ] Like it was made to do it. [ Frankie ] 519 point. [ Pat ] I'm gonna call that 520. [ Frankie ] 519.9 for torque and 507.8 for power, very very close. Nice curve too. The boost is nice and steady. The Haltech boost control is working awesome cause I saw 6 p-s-i all the way through. [ Pat ] The Haltech system shows its versatility because we went from N/A, put it in, put what we wanted for a target boost, and away we go. It runs great. Everything looks smooth. The engine's living and we say that and joke but I'll tell you what, very economical. If you have an engine, great. We went and bought a junkyard engine, put a very economical kit on it that Summit Racing had. We had to add some pipes that went with the kit that was very simple. I've never put something on that's that easy. [ Frankie ] You buy an engine for $500 bucks that's pretty common. We probably $2,500 I would say in all the turbo stuff. We're not gonna push it any farther because you don't want to turn it into a time bomb. Anybody could put this together and it will be safe, run great. The Haltech control will keep it where the a-f-r targets are supposed to be so you don't have to do any crazy tuning, and the engine will live that way. [ Pat ] We showed how to do it safely and economically, and proof's in the pudding. Great success! [ Frankie ] For more high power engine builds like this one you can find Engine Power on Powernation.
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