Northstar twin turbo into a Ford Fairlane.

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Shaun41178(2)
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Northstar twin turbo into a Ford Fairlane.

Post by Shaun41178(2) »

FieroPhrek working on that ls4 swap for 18 years and counting now. 18 years!!!!! LOL

530 whp is greater than 312
The Dark Side of Will
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Re: Northstar twin turbo into a Ford Fairlane.

Post by The Dark Side of Will »

Countersunk flatheads in the adapter plate... Uggg. If I wanted to see that shit, I'd head over the Rcheeee's.

Edit: The '93-'99 engines have decent intake and exhaust ports, with a good flow balance for NA power. These engines have hydraulic flat tappet valvetrains. The video notes that the Northstar fits the engine bay better than the Coyote. This is because the packaging envelope to which the original engines were designed was much smaller, resulting in weird chamber geometer. The exhaust valve angle is 7 degrees, while the intake valve angle is over 20 degrees. The spark plug wells are angled toward the intake and are not perpendicular to the deck. GM built the L37 version with 300 HP and the LD8 version with 275 HP, but better low RPM torque (and maybe a lower RPM torque peak as well?). All versions of the Northstar make better low end than a 4.9, though. :-D

For 2000, GM switched to a roller valvetrain. The finger followers and lash adjusters are common to Ecotec and Atlas (4.2 inline 6, 3.5 inline 5 and 2.8 inline 4) and later carried over to the High Feature V6 family. Because the valve tips are offset from the cam lobe when using this valvetrain layout, GM was able to mitigate the chamber shape resulting from the original engine's packaging layout. Exhaust valve angle increased a few degrees while intake valve angle decreased a few degrees. GM changed the spark plug well angle as well, and the '00+ valve covers will not fit the older heads, despite using the same seals. The cams are in the same locations. These changes also made the chamber more knock resistant and the '00+ engines can make full power on 87 octane, while the earlier engines required better fuel.

The 2000 intake ports and manifold flow significantly better than the '93-'99 intake ports and manifold. However, due to the need to have high exhaust gas temperature and velocity to light catalysts off quickly, the '00+ exhaust ports are actually smaller and WORSE for performance than the '93-'99 ports. The FWD (WWD) engines got a 1mm(?) bump in exhaust valve size in '05, but essentially ended their performance development there, despite being produced through 2011.

GM introduced the RWD engine in '04 in the XLR and SRX, then introducing the STS in '05. The RWD engines use the same intake ports as the '00+ FWD engines, but have significantly improved exhaust ports. I had a LOOONG correspondence with Allen Cline at the time, in which he said that the port flow improvements were the primary reason for the power bump from 295ish for the FWD engines to 320 for the RWD engines. You can also see from the video that the RWD exhaust ports are shaped similar to the '96-'97 3.4 DOHC exhaust ports. There's been almost no performance development on the RWD engines outside of GM, so the potential of these heads is anyone's guess. IIRC Alan Johnson mentioned they flow over 300 CFM, which is a lot of potential.

The RWD engines also have VVT, which brings together the low end torque of the LD8 and top end power of the L37 into one package. The change from WWD to RWD and the implementation of VVT are as close to kludgey as GM gets in their designs. There are a bunch of extra parts and things that were not originally meant to be there are inelegantly packaged at best. It's almost BMW-like relative to the WWD engines, which are (in the context of DOHC V8's) easy and cheap to manufacture, simple and elegant.
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