Street & Performance
Here’s a question that ought to neatly divide our reading audience in two: Which Camaro is better, the ’68 or the ’98?
During the muscle-car wars of the ’60s and early ’70s, few companies produced motors that were surrounded by the kind of aura that ebbed and oozed like a fog around Mopar. Engines like the 426 Hemi, 426 Max Wedge and 440 Six Pack were among the most coveted and feared of the era. It says something of a car company’s commitment to power and performance when a multi-carbed 440 big block is not the most wanted engine in a manufacturer’s lineup. So it was with Mopar, because for many, the 440 was the engine you got if you couldn’t afford or couldn’t find the car you wanted with a Hemi.
Low in its architecture and functionally beautiful, the LS2 engine is an ideal replacement for a previous generation of Chevy powerplants. It offers good
performance, greatly improved economy and plenty of support from an industry leaders.
In 1999, Stotts decided to replace the carbureted 350, which was installed in 1991, with a Corvette TPI motor. Stotts wanted to bring the car into the new millennium with style, adding the extra convenience of electronic fuel injection. A resident of Mena, Arkansas, Stotts visited nearby Street & Performance to get started on his project. The S&P guys are well-known for being wizards when it comes to figuring out how to stuff an EFI motor in an older car and actually making it work.
When it comes to enhancing the performance and reliability of performance cars, it seems as if enough is never enough, regardless of the vehicle, drivetrain or chassis. Then again, when you consider the problems that often cripple our cars despite the inherent strengths or improvements upon them, it’s often the driver that has the most detrimental effect on everything above the pavement.
First-generation Camaros are all the rage these days, and no wonder. With so many ways to bring them into a new era, they make great selections. So, while the big-block power and a five-speed trans served owner Gary Johnson well over the years, rocketing gas prices led him to a more efficient LS2 option.
The owner of this ’77 Chevy pickup got tired of the performance and poor fuel economy of the truck’s 350 small block, and rather than rebuild the engine, he decided to replace it with something better. If there’s an engine better than a small-block Chevy, it’s one of Chevy’s new Gen-III small-block engines, which include the Vortec truck motors, LS1/LS6, and even the new LS2/LS7.
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