For many, General Motors' Mr Stephens' Engine Shop online game is full of metallic looking stuff, none of it discernibly purposeful. What you're working with are extracted parts of the LS9 engine that powers the Corvette ZR1. Unless your ZR1 is in the shop for catastrophic engine failure, these components aren't usually seen out on their own. The General's little game has you correctly identify the major pieces and awards a prize after three rounds of correct answers (or lucky guesses). So many people, not just kids, are ignorant about the inner workings of the complex machine known as the car, so we applaud this effort to shed light on the mysteries that lie beneath the bodywork. Watch out for that fuel rail, we found it a little tricky to place. If anything, we're eager to get home and have the young ones begin learning auto anatomy. Thanks for the tip, Eden!
General Motors has announced that the blown beastie that lives under the hood of the Corvette ZR1 will be available as a crate motor next fall and our head is spinning with the swap possibilities.
With 639 hp and 604 lb.-ft. of twist available from the 6.2-liter supercharged V8, and dimensions shared by the LS3, any number of vehicles could make a happy home for the LS9. According to GM, the engine comes fully dressed, with an ignition system, exhaust manifolds and supercharger, and only needs an external oil tank and coolant tank (for the charge cooler), an ECU and wiring harness.
So, the question is: what would you fit the LS9 into? We've put together a poll after the jump, but feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.
Automobile Magazine was invited into General Motors Performance Build Center to watch and lightly assist in the buildup of a ZR-1's internal combustion heart. It takes four-and-a-half hours of real time to go from a bare block to a fire-breathing, supercharged LS9, but through the magic of sped-up video, it only takes seven minutes of your life. You won't come away with anything productive for that time, unlike the people in the video, who get the pleasure of creating a small-block V8, but it's a neat picture of how it all comes together. We just hope that some other poor sucker gets the motor that the magazine intern fiddled with. Video posted after the jump.
A company called LS9 is creating nearly pump-ready oil using single-celled bacteria. They start with industrial yeast organisms or "non-pathogenic strains of E. coli," and redesign their DNA so that they produce a different kind of waste. Crude oil is not far removed, molecularly, from the fatty acids expelled by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, so a little bit of DNA alteration bypasses the fatty acids and produces "Oil 2.0."
The "bugs" can be fed a variety of feedstock, from politically sensitive corn to Brazilian sugar cane to California wheat straw to Southern wood chips. The result is the same: crude oil that is almost ready to pour into your car. What's more: the enterprise is carbon negative, putting out less CO2 than the operation requires. At the moment it takes a 1,000-liter fermentation machine one week to make a 40-gallon drum of crude.
It will be a moment before they have a seamless industrial-sized operation. And there is that little concern of hundreds of billions of genetically-altered critters getting free and wreaking havoc on kids and puppies. But the promise of a steady supply of safely created $40 oil -- because even the Volt will need oil -- is not a bad thing to consider. Thanks for the tip, Brad!
When Chevrolet officially announced the new Corvette ZR1 just before the Detroit Auto Show this year, it hadn't yet finished the certification of its new power-plant, the supercharged LS9. At that time, all the engineers would tell us was that the supercharged 6.2L V8 would produce a minimum of 100hp/L or 620 hp. Three months have passed since we got our first official look at the LS9 and the numbers are now in. According to GM, the LS9 has now been SAE Certified at 638 hp and 604 lb-ft of twist. The official EPA fuel economy testing hasn't been finished and for people who buy a ZR1 it probably won't matter anyway. Nonetheless, GM expects the LS9 to be the most fuel efficient 600+hp engine in the world, a dubious distinction if ever there was one. A special team of technicians will be hand-building and testing the LS9 at GM's Performance Build Center in Wixom, Mich. Check out the articles below for all the details on the ZR1 and LS9.
Click the photo above for pics of the ZR1 Corvette and its LS9 engine
Yesterday we showed you an overview of the Corvette ZR1's heart, the force-fed 6.2L LS9 small block V8. In naturally aspirated form, the LS3 powerplant hits in the base 2008 Corvette hits 436 horsepower, but the addition of a new four lobe Eaton supercharger lifts the ZR1 into the horsepower stratosphere. Ron Meegan, assistant chief of GM's small block engine program, took us through the ins and outs of the ZR1's efficient new supercharger and we had our cameras rolling. Hit the jump to learn how the Eaton supercharger works and what makes it special. We also attached a one-minute video that details some of the differences between the supercharged LS9 V8 in the ZR1 and Cadillac CTS-V.
Since last summer, rumors have swirled in Australia regarding a potential "flagship" HSV GTSR. The original scuttlebutt had GM's Aussie performance division dropping the Corvette Z06's LS7 V8 into one of its fully-tricked, Commodore-based sedans. That never panned out. In the interim, we've seen the introduction of the blown, 620-horsepower, 6.2-liter LS9 V8 in the Corvette ZR1, as well as its less-caffeinated brother, the 550-horsepower LSA, in the Cadillac CTS-V. As such, the time is nigh to commence Round 2 of the HSV GTSR rumormongering. Australia's Motor magazine (no website? come on, guys) steps up to the plate with its March 2008 issue cover shot, a Photoshop of an HSV sedan sporting the ZR1's hood window, with a claim that the LS9 is headed Down Under. Whether the rumor's even remotely valid is anyone's guess, and it's likely to go on for months. You see, something like the mythical GTSR would be a pretty major reveal, worthy of a big stage like the Sydney Motor Show. That doesn't take place until October, so there's plenty of time for this one to get whipped into a frenzy. Thanks to Autoblog (and Motor mag) reader Zayed B. for the photo!
UPDATE: I'm reminded in the comments that the Melbourne Motor Show is less than three weeks away, so perhaps we'll get more word on whether there's a Super HSV in the works sooner rather than later.
Yea, we know - the automotive press has featured a whole bunch of Corvette ZR1 content lately (including us!), and readers are probably getting a bit tired. However, we figure that a cutaway of the mighty supercharged LS9 should be interesting enough to justify yet another post on the revived King of the Hill.
Painted in monochrome silver as GM is wont to do, this particular display isn't particularly photogenic. Still, we were able to capture some details that aren't easily observed in 2D drawing or press releases, so click through the jump for a variety of shots.
As gorgeous as the 2009 Corvette ZR1 may be on the outside, it's what is under the skin that gets our blood pumping. Fortunately, GM stripped down its new supercar to the bare essentials and put it on display here at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show.
You can access our gallery of ZR1 chassis photos by clicking on the photo above. We've also got commentary on what you're looking at after the jump.
It used to be that American muscle cars were competing against themselves when it came to power. But rumor has it that, in the case of the Chevrolet ZR-1, the domestic horsepower war has a new international benchmark: the BMW M-division V10.
Word is that "German competition is driving the higher horsepower and torque numbers coming to the Corvette." Chevy engineers said that the new LS9 was created to "match up favorably" with the V10 found in the M5 and M6. The supercharged 6.2-liter LS9 has 620HP and 595 lb-ft of torque, with 535 lb-ft available from 2,600 RPM and a 6,200-RPM redline. The high-revving, naturally aspirated 5.0-liter V10 has 507 HP and 385 lb-ft of torque, and goes all the way up to 8,250-RPM.
It's good to see Chevrolet taking its cues from the best, no matter whether its domestic or international. Especially when it's applied to an engine created with a different philosophy (large-displacement, low-revving grunt) to go in a car with a vastly different purpose than the M5 or M6. BMW's S85 V10 has won at least two International Engine of the Year awards for three years straight, and the LS9 still needs to prove itself. In the mean time, the far more powerful LS9 can gloat that it gets better highway gas mileage: 20 MPG versus. the V10's 17. American ingenuity, +1.
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