There is a lot of interest in the LS world nowadays. The LS is rapidly becoming the king of motors, surpassing the Honda B and K series or the 2JZ as the most popular motor to be swapped into imports. GM is also making some killer cars that use the LS platform as their OEM engine. With its compact dimensions, light weight and potential for big power in a dimensionally small package the LS is a very appealing platform indeed. With help from some of our partners like Eagle Rods and King Bearings, let us show you how it’s done!
One of the biggest markets where the LS excels is the drift market. In drifting a wide powerband is important. Drifting is also very brutal on equipment and a large displacement LS is under less stress than a highly boosted turbo 4 or 6 cylinders. Guess what going to last longer under hard use. For this next build, we are going to build a naturally aspirated LS3 for use in a Nissan 350Z Pro-Am drift car. For a Pro-Am car, budget is important so we decided to build a motor with good durability but a lower cost for items where we thought we could get away with it.
The LS3 displaces 6.2 liters or 376 Cubic inches with a 4.06″ bore and a 3.62-inch stroke. A drift car needs decent bottom-end torque and a wide powerband and the easiest way to do this is to increase the stroke. For this reason, we selected Eagle Crank Part Number 442740006100. This crank uses a 4″ stroke to get our displacement up to 414 cubic inches or 6.8 liters. When using a standard OEM LS block as the basis of your build, it is best not to exceed 4″ of stroke. This is because the cylinder skirts of the bores on the LS are on the short side and at past 4″ of stroke the piston skirts poke out of the bottom of the bores. This causes the pistons to become unstable in the bore at bottom dead center and you can see odd wear marks on the bore and on the piston skirts due to this.
We ordered our crank with a 58 tooth reluctor for new LS engines like the LS3. LS engines used in drifting tend to spin the reluctor on the crank causing crank angle sensor sync problems. Eagle welds the reluctor onto the crank to prevent this saving you from having to have this done.
The Eagle crank is machined out of a tough non-twisted 4340 forging. 4340 is a steel alloy with high amounts of nickel, chromium, and molybdenum. These alloying agents make steel that is highly fatigue and impact resistant making 4340 one of the best materials to make a crank out of. The crank is rated at 1500 hp so it will be more than strong enough to handle our naturally aspirated build. To finish our crank we got Eagle’s optional ESP Armor surface finishing. ESP Armor gives the parts a chrome-like super slick finish that is so smooth cracks have a hard time propagating in it, greatly improving fatigue strength. The super slick finish also reduces friction and windage losses which increase power.
For Rods, we chose Eagles heavy-duty H-Beam rods part number CRS6125O3D2000. The rods are rated at 1300 hp, this is much better than the standard Eagle rod which is rated at 750 hp. Drifting is tough use and if you can go stronger without a weight penalty, always side with stronger! The stock LS3 uses a rod length of 6″ but we opted to use a longer 6.125″ rod to reduce our piston speed and stress on the engine.
31 comments
What did you rev this engine to produce 650whp?
7200 rpm
What’s the part number for the block you used? TIA
12673475
Hello Mike
Would you able to build for me Good LSX engine for Drift?
Of course.
Of course, we can, it just takes money.
Mike, great information! I was wondering to build this engine as you did on your channel but running off regular premium gas, what modifications would I need to make? How much power loss could I expect as a result? I’m eager to get similar horsepower at the rear wheels. But I’m sure the current setup wouldn’t allow for premium gas.
You would need a lower compression ratio. You would probably lose 40 hp or so.
How much did this build cost you total ?
Price out all the parts including the block and every peice needed to have a plug and play motor. Multiply that number by 2.5 and it will be close.to actual cost.
Actually, it’s a lot less than that. The parts are expensive. Labor and machining are about $4000, WPC of most parts is about $2700
Price out all the parts including the block and every peice needed to have a plug and play motor. Multiply that number by 2.5 and it will be close.to actual cost.
Mike has $4000 plus $2700 parts = $6700
Pete’s rule of thumb parts [$2700] x 2.5 = $6750
Not too far off .
then there’s all the other stuff needed to have a runnin motor….Like Fuel ,Ign systems , ETC
There is no way the parts on this motor are only $2700! That is just the cost to WPC treat them.
What is the part number for the cam?
We don’t know, it was customer supplied and we didn’t recommend using it for drifting, not enough low end.
Will a 6.0l ls be able to use the same parts? I have a Pontiac G8 that I want to try and mimic this on.
Yes, but you won’t have quite the same displacement.
Thank you for the thorough explanation of everything. I wish more builders could/would break it all down as you have done!
hi mike, love your videos and information. can you please tell me the make and part # of the wrist pins you used in this build. thank you for your time.
Mike was $6700.00 around the actual price for plug and play
Mike said the labor, machining and WPC of most parts was $6700. That doesn’t include the cost of any of the parts. I would bet another $15000 in parts, my guess is $22000 to make it plug and play.
what about the core shift in the factory ls3 block?
what about it?
We notice some blocks are very thin on one side due to this. Some blocks are OK. Its just a cuation for people buying new blocks to do builds like this.
hello mike i am from holland and i want to build this engine for my volvo amazon 1966 project car
can i run this engine with 98 octane pump gas without race gas
or do i need to use another compresion ratio for that
i am planing to use it for street and strip use
hope you can help me
Yes you need to reduce the compression to around 11.5:1
Hi Mike. Love the content just one simple Question, Did you have the 6.2 Ls Bored over to a 6.8 liter for The Stroker kit or the stroker kit gave it the displacement to a 414 cubic inch?
It’s done with stroke, aluminum LS blocks can’t be bored out much, we said exactly what we are doing in the third paragraph, don’t be lazy, read!
Hi Mike. What oil weight do you recommend for drift ls3 with tight bearing clearances. Is 15w50 will be good choice or its too heavy ?
Thank you
Sure it is what we run.