- LSX Magazine - https://www.lsxmag.com -

Swap Insanity: Blown LS-Swapped Datsun 240Z Street/Strip Beast

We love LS swaps in foreign cars. Especially when they are of the lightweight, rear-wheel-drive variety, where the superior power of the Chevy V8 can exploit all of the good characteristics that its stock, underpowered engine just couldn’t. That’s just what we find going on with this street/strip 1972 Supercharged LS swapped 240Z we unearthed on LS1Tech.com. [1]

Forum member “mistafosta” explains how his initial swap idea for the car went sideways: “My original plan was to use a Buick v6 Grand National motor that I bought from a car that ran 10.70s at low boost and 3900lb curb weight. Unfortunately when I opened that motor up, I found someone had essentially thrown a grenade in it. Almost every internal hard part was destroyed, crank, pistons, heads…When I found out how much it would cost me to build a Buick motor with the power I wanted, I realized I needed to scrap the whole idea and pick another powerplant.”

[2]

Eventually he made the obvious choice to go with an LS in the Z, and bolted up the feared and respected D1SC ProCharger [3] to “boost” the power output. Moving that much air requires an equally large amount of fuel, so a Holley Dominator [4] fuel pump was enlisted to keep the hungry beast fed and happy. A Mike’s Ultimate TH400 Transmission transmits power to the fabricated four-link rear with a beefy Ford 9-inch. Other goodies on the Z include a coil-over suspension, Wilwood Brakes [5], and a set of tough looking Center Line Tel-Star wheels. Sharp eyed readers may enjoy a cameo appearance in the forum thread from Holley’s own Liz Miles, who is a skilled fabricator and did a bunch of work on the build.

Foster posted this video [6] in his build thread [1], showing one of the car’s first shakedown passes. Despite still having a few bugs to work out, he reports that the Z went 9.9 at 136 MPH. Since then the Z has suffered through a few setbacks, namely a spun bearing and some chipped pistons. However, Foster reports that he has the Z back up and running again, with an even more aggressive combo. We want to see more – how about you?

[7]