I agree there, and I just drove a stock 5.0 with an intake and exhaust and it is surprising how slow it felt. After that I was in mine and it felt good to have to peal it through all of second. The deal with the LT1s is even with junk gears the are very good cars for launching. They come out hard and make up for the gearing. Toss in a set of 3.42s and some DRs and if the rear lasts the car should be in the mid 1.7 60's all day. I just know that an average LT1 is a low 14s high 13s car, whereas an average fox (bone stockers) is a mid to higher 14s car. Take into account that E cam might even be hurting, and the cam in the Fbody is just waking it up, and you have a decent gap expanded by up to half a second more.
Oh well, I dont own an LT1, or a stock 5.0 anymore. Go race and let us know the outcome.
How did we get to talking about LS1's....thats not the dispute here. There's quite a difference between a 275- 285fwhp LT1 and a 325-335fwhp LS1...40-60hp in fact!!
Had a '93 LT1 Z28 for a few years back in the mid '90s. Bought it stock and added CAI, Full exhaust and eventually a 8psi Procharger. At that time I bought my Z28 a buddy bought a '93 Cobra which was stock as well. Stock for stock, I would win almost always. With both of use having full exhaust, gears, and CAI, I would win 4-5 races with him just winning if I did something wrong. We would do test and tune days every couple of months so we had probably 100 or so runs against each other just at the track and probably as many dig and roll races leaving work.
I used to have a whole shoebox full of timeslips that had notes written on them, but I threw them away when I moved to our new house 6 years ago. I think stock my Z28 ran 13.9-14.1 @98-100mph and after the CAI, gears, and exhaust it ran 13.4-13.6 @103-106mph. All this was on street tires.
well here's the actual production power numbers...
1993 Z28 275fwhp 325fwtq
1996 Z28 285fwhp@5000rpm 325fwtq@2400rpm!!!
1998 LS1 305fwhp@5200 335fwtq@4000
2002 LS1 310fwhp@5200 340fwtq@4000
Cant dispute the real numbers so i doubt that a stock LT1 is throwing down 275 at the wheels...thats like a 7% driveline loss!! These numbers dont include ram air options...WS6....or SS motors which all make either 325hp or 335hp!
They wont put down 275 to the tires stock, but easily 245-250. Figure a stock fox will throw down 190 and you have a 50+ hp deficit. 50 hp doesnt sound like a lot, but when it is 1/4 of your engines total power, thats a big deal. Even with the heavier weight the LT1s make great torque and were just faster than 5.0s.
325 ft-lbs at only 2400 rpm...thats an impressive figure. from those numbers you can really see why the LS series motors are highway runners with insane top end. (peak tq at 4000rpm) and the LT motors are just monsters down low!