Making just a smidge more than 500 hp, our budget-friendly 6.0L brawler has a widespread range of applications. You can easily daily drive it, race it on the weekends, and it makes plenty of low-end grunt that would allow it to work exceptionally well in a tow rig.
Building a powerful engine has long been about metric dollars. As the horsepower numbers increased, the zeros before the decimal point seemed to keep jumping up in the same steep curve. With today's amazing engine offerings available in crates directly from the factories, and aftermarket support at an all-time high, big-time power has become well within reach for the everyday working man on a real budget. Upholding our opinion on the subject is the 6.0L LQ4 we are featuring here. Netting 500 crank horsepower on a dyno with nothing exotic inside it, the LS-based mill left us in bewilderment that so little could work so well.
It used to be that you needed some serious know-how and maybe a friend or two that owed you favors to be able to even find, let alone build, a properly running LS engine. With this budget-built brawler, that mindset has all changed. We wanted to know more and we wanted to know where the secrets were hidden to finding big power at a lower cost. After poring over the parts list along with examining images showing the engine's assembly, we are extremely happy to report that nothing crazy popped up, and this engine can easily be yours with a modest amount of cash outlay. That's right, going fast doesn't have to empty your savings account, because high-quality parts at low price points now exist. Through our diligent price checking on parts, we put less than $4,500 into it (not including the labor necessary to put it together). Do you have some mechanical ability? Then build it yourself and save even more!
One of the main things to realize when building a stout LS engine is that the stock parts themselves can easily handle 500 to 600 hp (depending on the engine chosen to start with). Since the crank and rods are cast items, many jump to the conclusion that they need to be replaced for reliability. Those old ways of thinking have been replaced by a much more knowledgeable base of builders who have used the original internals, yielding great results in many naturally aspirated and even turbo/supercharged applications with nary a hiccup. Our choice in pistons necessitated the change of our rods due to the pin design, but the rods we chose were only $400 for the whole set and they included ARP fasteners. That's money well spent, and it illustrates the kind of thinking we put into this engine.
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1. Adding more amazement to the story is the horrible condition in which the engine began.
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2. After a thorough cleaning and machining, the Speed Pro cam bearings (PN: 129-1888M) wer
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3. It may appear to be a lot of parts, but only the basics were accounted for. The list in
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4. With a coating of Royal Purple oil to protect it, the camshaft was slid into its new ho
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5. Speed Pro main bearings (PN: 129-152M) were set into the block in preparation for the c
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6. A little assembly lube was applied to each main bearing before the stock 3.622 stroke c
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7. All five main caps were dropped in using new original hardware. The threads on the bloc
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8. Our 6.0L received its oil pump and single roller timing set from Sealed Power. We could
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9. To balance the harmonics of the rotating assembly, a 71⁄2-inch Professional Products da
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10. The original plan called for the stock LQ4 rods to be reused to further keep the budge
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11. High quality at lower cost led us to CP-Carrillo's Bullet line of pistons, pins, and r
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12. Roller lifters from Comp Cams (PN: 875-16) were set into the factory trays and dropped
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13. Most would consider head studs at these power levels to be overkill. We wanted maximum
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14. Every surface requiring a seal was closed off with gaskets from Fel-Pro.
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15. The original valley cover and hardware was set in place before being clamped down by o
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16. West Coast Cylinder Heads went through a set of
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17. Comp Cams valve seals were tapped into place as the heads were being rebuilt at West C
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18. When received from WCCH, the heads had been assembled with GM
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19. Ensuring we arrived at a pump-gas–friendly compression ratio, .041-thick Fel-Pro head
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20. Once in place, the ported and polished stock heads showed little outward sign of their
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21. Seeing as barely any material was altered during the head and block machining, it was
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22. Many would argue that we should have gone with a more aggressive camshaft profile and
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23. On the intake, we again went with Fel-Pro sealing products.
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24. The intake manifold chosen for our budget build was the polished 96mm Typhoon LS1/LS6
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25. Professional Products supplies fuel rails with its intake manifold, but not injectors.
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26. Following the basic theme, both the original oil pump pickup and crank windage tray we
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27. A stock truck oil pan was chosen for its greater oil-carrying capacity even though it
28. And how is this for exciting? 506 hp and 454 lb-ft of torque make for one sweet budget power package that you can use for tow and show!
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