The famous Baja 500 begins today in Ensenada, CA, and one of the more interesting dirt racers discovered by our friend Mike Levine at Pickuptrucks.com is the Tundra D-Cab PreRunner from TForce Motorsports. It looks good, has ridiculously huge King off-road racing shocks, and it's owned by former Indy 500 champ Danny Sullivan, but that's not what makes this rally racer unique. Power for the PreRunner comes from none other than GM's LS2 small-block. TForce crew member Matt Riggle told Levine that the team chose the 375-hp, 400 lb-ft powerplant because of its reliability, as well as its ability to run on regular Pemex gas that's much cheaper than facing fuel.
For the record, Toyota does not sponsor team TForce or its hopped-up PreRunner, but you can imagine that choosing a GM engine over one by Toyota because of reliability isn't exactly what the folks in Aichi, Japan like hearing.
[Source: Pickuptrucks.com]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Wally @ May 30th 2008 12:34PM
Nice!!
CarbonBlack @ May 30th 2008 12:38PM
It seems that a LS2 is kinda heavy for the Baja 500.
And as far as reliability, isn't Toyota>GM?
psarhjinian @ May 30th 2008 1:02PM
Reliability means different things in different situations:
* Racing teams what short-haul reliability under extreme conditions, and what could fail should be _quick_ to swap out. The car just needs to last for one race (heck, maybe even less, if it's modular enough), and it has the benefit of a team of ultracapable technicians and engineers (and the driver!) monitoring the hell out of it. All your Civic has is you and, if you remember to bring it in, the guys in the shop.
* Fleets want cars that are cheap and easy for low-skill staff to repair, and don't care much for reliability after the lease ends. Cost isn't an issue per unit as economies of scale can make an less reliable but cheap-to-fix car (like the Crown Vic) less expensive than generally more reliable model.
* Consumers wants whole-car reliability over the long haul, and they're especially fickle. They won't care that a car went 250,000km without an engine rebuild, just that it _needed) the rebuild. It'll also bug them if brakes wear quickly or warp, paint delaminates, pumps fail, etc (all relative non-issues to fleet buyers) and are really unforgiving of rattles and electronics problems. And they don't know anything about the car and might not maintain it well.
There's an old anecdote about how Honda lets powertrain engineers work on their F1 team first, before letting them anywhere near designing a Civic's engine. In the case of this truck, the engine needs to be easily field-serviceable and proven to run under race conditions. The iForce in the standard Tundra might be a more reliable choice _for a consumer_, but that's because a consumer truck engine is going to live a very different life, with a very different set of expectations, than this one will.
why not the LS2LS7? @ May 30th 2008 1:10PM
The LS2 is lighter than the Toyota motor.
Jason @ May 30th 2008 1:14PM
^ Well said
Yar @ May 30th 2008 1:18PM
"It seems that a LS2 is kinda heavy for the Baja 500."
Pushrod engines tend to be significantly lighter than other engines in the same power range.
Reliability wise, the SBC has been around (in one incarnation or another) for the better part of 50 years, and has been used for racing ever since. There are more performance parts for GM engines that most other aftermarkets combined, which means the engine can be built up however you want it to be and as reliable as you could ever possibly desire. From what I could observe on their website, the crew of this team is quite experienced, they picked a GM engine for a reason.
CarbonBlack @ May 30th 2008 2:33PM
Did a little research, and I Was WRONG.
thanks for the great info!
motorman @ May 30th 2008 3:52PM
the LS-2 is a all aluminum engine and you can't get much lighter than that
CarbonBlack @ May 30th 2008 7:37PM
here is the link that I used to educate myself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_LS_engine
VTL @ May 30th 2008 12:42PM
That's a Tundra like Toyota's NASCAR car is a Camry.
tankd0g @ May 30th 2008 1:16PM
Correct, it's a tube frame chassis built by SPD Products, the only thing Toyota on this thing is the decal. I suspect the Chevy engine isn't all that much chevy either, since it's built by Kroyer Racing Engines.
Corey W. @ May 30th 2008 1:56PM
A modified LS2 small block is still a small block. The engine is a lot closer to what's in a production GM vehicle than that truck is to a Toyota truck.
PJ @ May 30th 2008 6:42PM
Or like ANY Nascar is its road-going equivalent.
tankd0g @ May 30th 2008 12:43PM
In off road racing, reliability = simplicity and there's nothing simple about Toyota's V8.
Shoaib @ May 30th 2008 12:44PM
facing fuel?
Todd @ May 30th 2008 12:46PM
Toyota thinks Consumers are too stupid to notice. My suggestion is to make sure this blog post get picked up by the Japanese news agencies - I bet the heads of Toyota are keeping this quiet from the JDM market.
"You have disgraced our company!"
dejal @ May 30th 2008 12:53PM
You: "Toyota thinks Consumers are too stupid to notice"
The Text:
"For the record, Toyota does not sponsor team TForce or its hopped-up PreRunner"
What part didn't you understand or are you too S... to notice?
Lithous @ May 30th 2008 3:51PM
Doesn't matter whether Toyota sponsors the vehicle(s) or not. Todd's point is the same. The Toyota name is on the vehicle. I'm sure Toyota could yank the use of the name if they wanted or at least put out a small press release saying they have nothing to do with the team (once they found out Chevy is in there) but instead they know that Americans look at one level of logic and see "Toyota" winning the race (if that was the outcome.) Period.
Again, Todd's point still makes sense, more Toyota trucks will be sold if this won the race than Chevy trucks if this won the race. Which makes Toyota not feel disgraced that given a choice, any team (including the Toyota "sticker" team) picked a Chevy engine over a Toyota engine. In traditional Japan that would be not good, in world domination, money hungry, Toyota's Japan, apparently it doesn't matter.
But yes, one level of thinking could bring one to your conclusion, dejal.
Vik @ May 30th 2008 12:49PM
How is the article title: "Toyota team runs GM-powered Tundra in Baja 500" accurate when they are not a Toyota-sponsored team at all?
Corey W. @ May 30th 2008 2:08PM
You're looking too deep into the title, there's a difference between a manufacturer sponsored team and a team using a certain manufacturer as their platform. Either way they can still be called a [INSERT MANUFACTURER] Team.