Video: Steve Morris Engines Builds 2,075-horse LSX For Drag Week

You’ve read the title and now you’re wondering how it’s possible to build that much horsepower into a smaller-cube engine combination and have it survive the rigors of Drag Week–so we spoke with Alex Esnaola of Steve Morris Engines and uncovered all of the specifics.

“This engine is for one of our longtime, repeat customers who is building a 2010 COPO Camaro clone for Drag Week’s Super Street Power Adder class,” says Esnaola. “He’s registered and made the cut.”

sme3The details on the combination are relatively simple. Using an LSX block and a pair of Brodix‘s BR7 12-degree aluminum cylinder heads as a base, then topping the engine with a highly-modified Holley Hi-Ram intake manifold, the team was able to build a solid combination that should prove to be extremely reliable for the owner. But achieving 2,075 horsepower and 1,776 pound-feet of torque can’t happen without a bit of boost. To that end, SME worked very closely with Bill Devine at Bullseye Power to craft a set of 80mm BatMo-wheel turbochargers to feed the thirsty engine. The entire works is controlled by one of Holley’s Dominator EFI engine management systems and tuned in-house at SME.

The most critical aspect of this engine’s development is its performance not on the racetrack, but on the street, since it will see plenty of miles while driving from track to track on the Drag Week circuit.

“With respect to the cylinder heads, we have been working with our partners at Brodix to come up with a cylinder head that uses our port program with their cylinder head casting and the Holley intake manifold, which we have modified in-house to try and optimize the combination a bit more than a traditional out-of-the-box offering,” says Esnaola.

“As with most all of our engines, we took a look at the overall project, spent a lot of consultation with the customer in terms of where the customer wanted to be with the usable power range, not just for a flat-out, max-effort ragged edge build. It was more important to build an engine with a broad power base, was drivable, and had a lot of power under the curve. We designed the engine around those goals.”

One area that received plenty of attention was the camshaft and valvetrain, as it was very important to this customer that he not have to pull the valve covers off and check the valvesprings every time he wanted to fire the car.

Alternate views of the engine. In these photos the intake manifold has not been modified yet.

“We designed the torque curve to look the way that it did to provide a friendly, happy, good-driving car–as much as you can make a 2,100 horsepower engine a daily driver. It’s not something that’s going to be slovenly and falling all over its face in those situations,” says Esnaola.

Using a small solid roller camshaft as well as other components designed to hold up to this sort of usage, the team was able to create an engine package that is not only repeatable on the dyno but will be more realistic for the customer to maintain. An air-to-air intercooler was used to maintain that user-friendliness; there’s no ice-water tank or other race-type equipment that will require lots of maintenance here.

“It’s easy to chase a maximum horsepower number, but you end up with something that has a very narrow peak, not something that has broad power everywhere. This is not a max-effort class-killer style engine combination. This is a well-thought-out engine that is going to not require a whole lot of user intervention where you’re going to have to change springs every two weeks and check valve lash all the time. Once the vehicle is put together and done, the customer can go race Drag Week, grudge classes, and drive it around and enjoy it. It’ll be reliable for him,” says Esnaola.

smedyno

About the author

Jason Reiss

Jason draws on over 15 years of experience in the automotive publishing industry, and collaborates with many of the industry's movers and shakers to create compelling technical articles and high-quality race coverage.
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