Out With the Old, In With the New LSX 440

St. Petersburg Florida resident Mike Rimar has had this 94 Camaro for several years and been through a few combos along the way, though always sticking with the factory style LT1 engine. The most recent piece treated him right but fell short of meeting some goals mike had set for himself, namely breaking into the five second zone in the 1/8^th mile.

After running a string of 6.0’s on several different occasions with a 300 shot of nitrous and a blown head gasket later, he called it quits, but then called up the nice folks at Virginia Speed and started selling off spare and not so spare LT1 parts he had on hand. That was just over a year ago and now the parts are finally at the machine shop. Mike chose Nelson Competition in Pinellas Park, Florida for this stage of the build which is scheduled to be completed in March of this year.

Back in November of 2009 Mike and his father attended a TNT session and lined them up. Mike would get by his dad then go on to a new personal best 6.08 @ 111 on a later run. The 383 LT1 engine was built by John’s Engine in Pinellas Park, Florida. AFR 210 Competition Heads topped off a forged rotating assembly while the induction consisted of an Edelbrock Victor Intake and carb style throttle body controlled by a reprogrammed factor computer. With a 300 hit of NX nitrous the little LT1 was good for 6.0’s @ 113 in the 1/8th and a best of 9.51 @ 139 out the back door.

Since Mike is adding a lot more power other parts of the car are being upgraded as well. The factory 9 inch housing will be swapped out with a fab 9 unit and upgraded from the current 33 spline to 35; the TH 400 trans will be traded or sold off to buy a good glide.

The stout LSX Bowtie block will be filled with a Callies Dragon Slayer Crank, Compstar I Beam Rods and JE Nitrous friendly pistons.

On top is a pair of Performance Induction LXR fully CNC’d LS7 12 degree heads and their CNC ported bolt together 4500 series manifold. A Pro Systems SVI carb will mix the fuel and air and we can’t forget about the direct port nitrous system still to come. The spent gas will be directed by Kook’s 2” primaries dumping to 3 1/2” merge collectors.

Here is a look down the ports of the intake. The ports are designed and CNC cut by computer. The bolt together design makes it possible to get everywhere inside the runners.