I was just curious... about how much power will a stock lt-1 bottom end run without issue? I was thinking about doing le2 heads and cam one day, when I can scrounge up the cash and was wondering, if it would be necessary to beef up the bottom end? Now I'm talking about a car being run mostly on the street and taken to the track to do a pass or two, once or twice a year.

 

The stock bottom end should be good for at least 350 HP if everything is in good condition. If you are looking at keeping it without NOS or forced induction, you should be okay.

But a lot will depend on what other mods you plan to do to the car.

You also need to take in to count how many miles your car has on it. If there is more than 100K on the clock, I would start looking at a complete tear down to see how everything is. Especially if you are not the original owner as you cannot be certain of how the car was treated and maintained.

 

i agree with grandpa. that said, there's no set number where you will blow up the bottom end. some will die with the stock horses, some have lived in the 450 hp range.

lots of people run the LE2 package on the stock bottom end without problems

 

Thanks for the input. I know that there is no definite limit to the amount of power it will handle. I'm thinking about just saving up even longer and do a complete rebuild with an eagle rotating assembly and some arp rod bolts, etc. but I'm still just trying to figure it out. The cars got 98k miles on it so it's pretty close to 100k. Until then I am just going to do headers, rear gears, and some more bolt ons. Then when I come up with the extra cash I can build a better motor.