Network
One of the awesome things about the daily gig here is that we get to play with all sorts of project cars in an effort to bring you, our favorite people, the latest in technical advances and cool parts available for your hotrod. Project Blank Slate is a departure from our normal state of affairs – instead of putting money into making the car look good, our intention is to spend the time and effort on the powertrain and chassis combination to turn it into a heck of a street-stormer and sometimes-autocrosser. Our friends at Late Model Engines are screwing together a wicked LSX combination that will end up between the framerails of Blank Slate in the near future.
Our 502 cubic-inch engine has a stout foundation from RHS and was built by Late Model Engines.
The engine is based around one of RHS‘s 9.75-inch tall-deck aluminum blocks and RHS Pro Elite LS7 cylinder heads. The block is cast from premium A357-T6 aluminum alloy and features a raised cam tunnel, siamese bores, billet main caps, and many other tricks, including the ability to be used in a dry-sump configuration, that make it an extremely racer-friendly engine block. Lunati‘s huge 4.6-inch stroke crankshaft, combined with their 6.300-inch lightweight connecting rods, will swing a set of 11.5:1-compression Wiseco slugs to displace a whopping 502 cubic inches from the small-block platform.
It doesn’t look like much – yet…
RHS’s Pro Elite CNC’d LS7 heads have been recently redesigned, and have been supplemented by a set of Ferrea titanium intake and Pro Alloy exhaust valves along with a complete contingent of Comp Cams valvetrain products. A custom hydraulic-roller from Comp Cams‘ LSX line is ground with .660-inch lift on both intake and exhaust lobes, while duration comes in at 254 degrees on the intake and 266 degrees @ .050 on the exhaust side. ARP, Clevite, and Total Seal have also earned their respective places in our build. It uses F.A.S.T. XFI for engine management and came off the dyno making a very potent 720 horsepower at 6400 RPM and 669 foot-pounds of torque at 5300 RPM. We’ll have a complete breakdown of the engine and everything that went into its creation coming up soon, so keep your eyes peeled!
