Hey everyone, so after a good decade or so,I’m finally back to work on my LT4 stroker engine for my ‘94 and I’m trying to get a few ideas. I’m wanting some “heads- cam- intake” combos that have worked really well for you. And with track and/ or dyno figures always welcomed! Here’s what I’ve already got going:

I have a built 2 bolt LT1 main block with 4 bolt main splayed caps with a fully forged GM High Performance steel crank. Carrillo rods and forged Wiseco pistons. With the 3.8” crank stroke x the 4.04” bore size it comes out to a 390 ci stroker- or just a tad under (389.7 or so). I purchased a set of fully ported LT4 AFR 190 heads with 54 cc chambers about 20 years ago with a gasket matched OEM GM LT4 intake. It has a manual transmission, 3.75 rear gears, and long tube headers. The car will see mostly strip action and very little street- basically just back and forth to the strip. I’m going to have the heads cleaned up and possibly have the runners opened up as well depending on costs. The cam and intake/ fuel delivery hasn’t been finalized yet. I have the aforementioned OEM LT4 intake with fuel injection and I have an LT4 intake for a carb conversion as well- haven’t decided yet which way to go.

I’m mainly wanting to know what YOU’RE running and what has worked well for you- heads/ cam/ intake combos- real world experience. And what didn’t work as well as you expected. Not really wanting to start a cam comparo war or anything like that (unless you’ve actually used them). Maybe what you “wished” you would have done differently. If you have run carb vs FI, which gave better results, costs? Anyway, all info is greatly helpful and appreciated- as always! Thanks.

 

My old 96 had a 383 LT4 with Afr 195 heads,comp hyd roller 232/236 @ .050 on a 112,Factory intake and 52mm TB. Stainless Works 1 5/8 long tubes into a Corsa 2.5 cat back.Six speed with 4.10 gears. Made 441 rwhp and was a blast to drive. A larger cam would have made more HP but at the sacrifice of drivability. Maybe 1 3/4 headers would have helped but it did pretty well.

 

Being a purest I would heavily be leaning towards staying with Fuel Injection. But doing so requires more planning. You might need to reverse engineer this approach and find a Tunner who can work your ECM for your combination. This will most likely mean picking a Camshaft that works with the Tune and not the other way around. The other way of doing this is to go with an Aftermarket ECM which will have more tuning ability than the OEM. If going this route, I would go to Rick Jones Websight and fill out his form and he will engineer a Camshaft for your combination. Sounds like the parts you have already might be a bit overkill but you're on the way to the great combination.

 

Thanks for the reply. Yes, FI is already set up on the car from the factory of course, and I really like the OEM red LT4 intake. And I installed many years ago the AO Engineering forced air intake that goes through the front bumper, which I really like as well. However to maximize
my new setup with the LT4 intake, I will need to upgrade injectors ($600), new throttle body- either 58mm or mono blade ($400- $550), new throttle body nitrous plate ($300), and silicone air coupler hoses that run from the intake manifold to the air box ($100 &#129335. Also, MSD offers a complete opti-spark package ($1,400) to replace the crappy factory one (ignition, cap & rotor, wires, and MSD ignition box). And there a few options out there, the cam selection ($500- $1,000) is also limited with the current Gen 2 LT opti-spark style setup. I may be able to cut some costs on a couple of things, but it’s gonna be roughly $3,500 and haven’t even started with ECU tuning. I’m not complaining, I’m just price comparing with other setups.

I haven’t finished all of the carb equipment pricing because I don’t have everything I need list. What I do already have is an LT4 carb intake. I’ll need a good carb ($800- $1,000), HEI ignition ($400). The nitrous plate would mount underneath the carb and costs less than $100. I’m not sure yet of what other brackets, block off plates, timing chain cover, etc., but the cam selection and prices are much better. Good luck finding a solid roller cam for a Gen 2 LT1- I can’t.
I even contacted Comp Cams and all they did was give me the runaround.

The third option is the Holley Sniper 2. It costs around double of a decent carburetor, but it’s FI good to about 600 hp, and it’s basically self tuning. I have the LT4 intake that it would mount to, and I would still need pretty much everything else that goes along with the carb setup as mentioned above along with the carb nitrous plate (minus the carb of course). And I believe one of the Sniper 2 packages comes with an ignition option too.

Idk- like I said, I’m about half way through, not only pricing, but also getting all the info on everything too- especially these last two. Thanks again.

 

There's nothing special about the cam core for the LT1/4. Same as a small nose factory roller 86+ SBC. Comp wants to sell you a POS SADI core hyd roller for too much money..... at least they won't put mechanical profiles on it knowing it'll fail faster....

Call Mike Jones at
http://jonescams.com/

Mike grinds all of our custom cams. He'll get you a billet core and recommend you some nice reliable lobe profiles.
Will

 

Ok thanks for the heads up. I bought this mechanical roller Crane cam 20-25 years ago, and it’s still brand new, with the intentions of using it in the future if I ever built a new engine/ or stroker. I’m assuming that it should work fine, right? Here is the cam info: