staff@slashgear.com (Joe Capraro)
2024-04-15 06:45:42
www.slashgear.com
The bridge between the first crop of Chevy small block V8s and the equally legendary LS series was the LT-1, which first appeared in the 1992 Corvette with some important upgrades. Some of those proved to be more effective than others. This 5.7 liter 350 cubic-inch V8 is not to be confused with the 2014 and later LT1 engine. It was also used in the ’93 Camaro and some later models, as well as some B-body models. On the plus side was the reverse cooling system, which used a gear-driven water pump to circulate coolant through the cylinder heads before the block. This lowered combustion temperatures and allowed for higher compression.
One flawed implementation was the Opti-spark ignition system, which landed somewhere between more classical distributor systems and later coil-on-plug designs and used an array of optical sensors to send timing data to the engine computer. The system was easy to assemble at the factory but was also prone to moisture-related failures, and it was hard to troubleshoot once it started acting up. GM ironed out some of these issues in later generations of the LT-1, but it’s certainly not a powerhouse for everybody.
[Featured image by Rich Niewiroski Jr. via Wikimedia Commons|Cropped and scaled|CC-By 2.5]