BANGIN’ GEARS
GROUND ZERO
T
rivia question: What’s the most
commonly swapped engine in
hot rodding? If you guessed
“Gen III LS,” you’d be close, but you’d
still be wrong. A better answer might
be, “the engine you already have.”
As much as we love the latest crop
of super-powerful crate engines, their
super-high price tag means car crafters
are far more interested in the salvage-
yard reactor core—whether it’s a $
6.0L LS from a 10-year-old Suburban or
the free 5.0L Windsor in the 1987 T-bird
sitting behind your barn.
Of course, your own brand loyalty is
subject to influencing the outcome, but
there is an upper limit to how much
resistance a car crafter can take before
succumbing to the force of limited
finances. At the end of the day, if it’s a
choice between staying a car crafter or
walking away from it, most guys stay.
That means either waiting it out and
paying for the “right” engine when the
money is handy, or committing the car-
dinal sin of putting a brand “X” engine in
a brand “Y” vehicle. (You might be wait-
ing a really long time to build the “right”
304ci AMC V8 for your 1975 Pacer, but
if you do, we hope you send pix!)
These cars and engines just don’t
give a flip, and until you pop the hood,
nobody knows the difference. A day
is going to come when you will be
ecstatic to find any running, internal-
combustion V8, and while that’s many
years in the future, we will see it. My
point is, intramural brand rivalries are
healthy and fun, but they can some-
times be obstructive if the ultimate
goal is to just get your project moving
under its own, higher power.
We just got back from Holley’s LS
Fest West, where we were remindedof this once again by car owner Jordan
Vander Woude, who said it best: “I
was born and raised a die-hard Ford
fan, but it’s way cheaper, and there are
more performance options with the
LS.” Vander Woude’s LS-powered 1981
Mercury Zephyr can be found in the
story “LS All The Things,” a compen-
dium of our favorite LS swaps from LS
Fest West, which starts on page 58.
We’ll also have a full feature on Vander
Woude’s car in a later issue—it’s that
cool.
Chevy sure deserves credit for the
ceaseless promotion of the LS over the
decades (and LT more recently), but to
be fair, much of the Chevy’s popularity
in the car hobby is due to companies
in the aftermarket that have a vested
interest in the engine family and will be
industry players long after GM moves
on to the next big thing. Case in point:
Performance Systems Integration (PSI)
of Brick, New Jersey. They’re a vibrant,
young company specializing in the
unique wiring needs of guys trying to
splice every LS ever built into every-
thing from riding mowers to Ferraris.
We met PSI at Holley LS Fest West
in Las Vegas this May. Like many new
companies in hot rodding, its founders
gave up lucrative jobs in industry—in
this case, aerospace engineering—to
do something they love. As insane as
it looks on paper to an accountant or
investment strategist, it felt so right to
PSI’s founders that they had no choice
but to jump in head first. If you ever
get stuck in an impossible LS or LT wir-
ing or tuning issue, give them a shout
(PSIconversion.com; 732/444-3277).
You’ll find satisfaction at just how deep
down the rabbit hole these guys can go
on your project.I mention PSI, but virtually every
vendor at LS Fest West has a similar
story. Every mom-and-pop business
making parts to support the LS swap
started out as a frustrated car crafter
trying to do something that hadn’t
been done before.
Nevertheless, there will be some—I’ll
say it—“Ford” guys who aren’t buying
any of this. (Mopar guys don’t care,
because Hemi, and they’ll just remind
you that Louis Chevrolet drove a Dodge
at the Indy 500!) Those of us with Ford
blue in our veins have good reason to
feel betrayed. Without Henry and his
model T, we’d still be pedaling veloci-
pedes for crissakes. You can imagine
how our ears perked up when we
heard that in 2019, Holley is going to
apply the LS Fest formula to the Blue
Oval, right down to the same venue:
Beech Bend Raceway Park in Bowling
Green, Kentucky.
As a racer who attended the inau-
gural Mobil 1 World Ford Challenge in
Bowling Green way back in 1998 (my
Vortech-blown 1987 LX 5.0 ran 10s in
WFC’s Open Comp class), I would love
to see car crafters Ford-ify some Vegas
and Malibus. Look for the announce-
ment on Holley’s website for details,
but just know that we’ll be there. Hol-
ley already has a terrific assortment of
Ford parts for Windsor, Mod, and Coy-
ote engines, as well as a proven track
record with events like this, so it should
be fun. Until then, Car Craft will keep
hammering on its three Ford projects:
contributor Mark Gearhart’s Gen III
Coyote crate dyno series, Jefferson Bry-
ant’s father/son 1969 Mustang, and Jeff
Huneycutt’s Fake Snake project with a
Gen II Coyote crate swap. The Coyote
has some catching up to do relative
to the LS, but with more of the heavy
lifting being done by Holley and other
aftermarket companies—aided now
by its very own event—the gap could
close fast! —Johnny HunkinsDick Hamm’s 1975 AMC Pacer at Holley’s LS
Fest West in Las Vegas. It’s fitting that we
kick off an issue of Car Craft with an AMC.
Be happy it’s LS powered—they almost
came with Wankel engines!4 CAR CRAFT OCTOBER 2019
[email protected]
Facebook.com/carcraftmag
CarCraft.com
Car Craft Mag
831 S. Douglas St.
El Segundo, CA 90245