Does anyone have weights for LT1/LT2 and/or the blackwing Turbo V8? I think this comparison will help us understand how much weight Chevy will add to the Z06. I would prefer they use the budget to lighten the car to compensate ala the C6, They probably won't. Thus will we see a 3800lb corvette?

 

I haven't been able to find a weight for the Blackwing engine. If we could it would be an indicator of the potential weight of a projected Corvette engine. I would think the Corvette engine will be heavier as it will probably have a larger bore spacing. The Blackwing is only 96mm and the LT2 is 111.7mm. To get to 5.5liters and not have a really long stroke the bore spacing will have to be larger than the Blackwing. Larger Bore spacing naturally leads to dimensionally larger engine. Using similar casting and material technology, that means heavier.

Is anyone aware of the weight specs for the Blackwing, along with what is included in that spec weight?

 

RacerX, I agree with all of the above. I was just curios for comparison. DOHC should be heavier, but maybe the AFM stuff eats into some of that difference.

 

the fully dressed caddy black wing engine with turbos is pretty heavy

I wouldn't look at the black wing, the vette engine will likely be bigger bore

so what you need to know that no one outside gm does is how much does the tt vette engine weigh and how much will the turbos increase the weight

no doubt those little suckers are heavy, but 9-- or so hp can compensate for weight

getting weight out of the c8 will be a bit hard based on beefing everything up and then later electric front engine

its a big car and taking on more parts won't make it weigh less

 

Maybe they start using a Helium bubbles in the resin for the panels and Helium bladders in the body voids to reduce the weight of the car.......

Of course the mass wouldn’t change so maybe it would not help, or so claimed my physics teachers, but I guess they could have been lying.

 

Just the engine shouldn’t be that much heavier (likely within 50lbs). It’s the two turbos, intake/exhaust piping, front/engine heat exchangers, coolant pump, coolant and cooling piping that will pack on the pounds. I’d figure at least 150lbs heavier for everything.

will they build a NA version... don’t know

 

I thought it was comparable weight to the LT4

 

or they could use hydrogen and call the model the Zeppelin06

 

Not much low hanging fruit to make the car any lighter. The chassis is already all aluminum and the latest iterations of light-weight SMC are very close to carbon composites to where it's simply not worth the cost. If each panel is 1 lb lighter out of carbon that's mot material.. we're talking 11 pounds.

 

I looked up the 4.2L Blackwing spec the other day. Definitely interesting but an odd engine.

It stroke is longer than bore, which generally means it designed to operate at a lower RPM and give high torque. The peak HP is listed at only 5700 rpm which is low for a DOHC engine. I believe it was clearly designed for the big & heavy Cadillac to give good fuel mileage and high torque at lower RPM. Kind of the opposite of what is needed in the Corvette. Probably, Chevy looked at it and said it would need too many design changes to make it suitable for the C8 Z06.

 

I can't see the economics of such an engine for a low volume single application. Maybe Mercury Marine will get involved with production if they do.

 

I hope they don’t put in titanium connecting rods like the LS7/9 that are proving to be a problem.

if you don’t know, check the c6z06/zr1 forum now. Page one has a decent length thread going.

 

maybe they will/should just use the DOHC heads from ''mercury marine''

 

it would be great to do a volume ramp up on the sb4 merc marine design to bring costs down

chevy will likely do their own thing this time. think about robbing the 2.7 4 cyl turbo parts bin on a new block

it would save gm money and let them do like they always have, share parts across the line

a higher flow/boost v8 version of a 5.4 would make plenty of power, and then add the motor up front to meet CAFE

 

The 92 thru 5 LT5 was designed by Tony Rudd of Lotus which GM owned at the time. Mercury Marine manufactured the engine because GM can't do low volumes. The same would be true for any other low volume HP engine that GM designs.

 

The story I read was Lotus ripped off GM when they were contracted to design the LT5 engine because much of that design was used elsewhere. Also, GM made a huge mistake when they over priced the ZR1 option with the LT5 engine at $25k. Used ZR1 prices fell dramatically in the used market. People valued that option at about $10k not $25k that GM priced it.

The aftermarket tuners chuckled at the initial 375hp rating as they could get that with the current small block design without too much effort. I did drive one owned by a friend of mine and loved it. Wish I owned one.

All the engines were built early by Mercury Marine and warehoused because GM over estimated the demand. The big year of sales was the first and it tapered off to a few hundred after that. Great engine never the less.

 

Correct. I owned a '93 ZR-1 which had the 405 h/p engine. Bought it at a GM factory sale in '95 and was documented as having been used by Jim Perkins (Head of Chev at the time). One of only 20 dark green ZR-1s that year - only about 440 or so made in '93. Some motors were a little stronger than others, supposedly due to how the 4 cams were set-up. Great engine in a C4 flexible flyer chassis. Was nose heavy because of the extra engine weight up front, so understeer on the corners..

Big problem with these cars was also parts availability. People bought them and stashed them so GM produced too few replacement parts because there were so few parts failing. Towards the end, Doug Rippie and LPE bought up a lot of the remaining supplies of parts. After '92, Chevy was already abandoning the ZR-1 so all few future engines were manufactured and "bagged" to finish out the run to '95.

 

I owned a 93 Polo green ZR1. I ordered a Ruby red anniversary car. The dealer called me and said he has a Ruby red Vette if I wanted to see what the color looked like. I freaked when I saw those purple seats. He took me into the shop and showed me the green car which I took. I shipped that car to Europe and put 8 000 miles on it. Hit 180 a lot of times. Germans and French pestered me to buy it. I eventually sold it to a guy in Munich who still has it. I got it in September 92 and shipped it in February 93 and sold it in April for a bundle. It paid for the car, the trip and then some. The engine and ZF gearbox made glorious sounds. GM changed the torque rating of the gearbox when they made it quieter because of customer complaints. Lingenfelter has all the remaining parts which are not cheap. McLelland left under a cloud because of that LT5. The design was compromised because of the lack of space under the hood and the bean counters wanted the heads to be interchangible with the cast iron small block so the bore centers were the same. It turned out to be an almighty boat anchor. The last LT5 was made july 92. Dick Guldstrand suffered the most. He was building his Guldstrand GS based on the ZR1 and GM didn't tell him that the engine and gearbox had been discontinued. Same thing happened to me when GM discontinued the 96 LT4 when both cars were about to reach production. It cost Dick a $million.

 

I also owned a 1996 LT4. It was the last of the LT line, thankfully. The Optispark was a bad design that nobody can disagree with. The following year, 1997 C5 came out and was the first of the LS1 that got rid of the Optispark with had full computerized ignition. Much better design.

 

If you had one of the other Polo Green II cars, like mine and 19 of the 20, it had a black interior. Only one '93 Polo Green car had the tan interior I wanted, but it was owned by a guy who lived in Long Island and who ran the ZR-1 Owners Registry at that time. I believe Doug Rippie did a run of 8 "black widow ZR-1's" that had another 75 or so H/P. Not too long after that I was trying to do a partner deal with Doug to work with the Earnhardt folks in NC to do a series of "Signature Special" Earnhardt cars. We got so far as to do a presentation at his dealership in Hickory, but when Dale passed, it killed any hopes for the project. Its true about the forced bore centers, but I never considered the engine to be a boat anchor...