We have been building engines for the Slingshot now for awhile and constantly working to provide a better product. We are now offering our new V2 engines with a lot of little upgrades that will provide even more reliability to the built engines we do. Some of these upgrades include bronze valve guides for the valves, Viton seals for the valve guides, all 8 intake valves and all 8 exhaust valves are replaced with new units, new GM oil pumps, improved coolant flow through the cylinder head and addition of an option for the Gen 3 blocks as an option.
What is a gen 3 block you may ask? Well, the original LE5/LE9 engine found in the Slingshot has its block cast by a process called "lost foam". During this process a styrofoam engine core is placed in sand and molten aluminum is poured into the mold were the aluminum replaces the styrofoam. If you look closely at the side of the stock engine, you will see the surface looks like styofoam because of this process. This lost foam process allowed GM to cast a complicated engine relatively easily, however it was found to cause a weak point that can allow small cracks to form in the block. This led GM to improve the block during the next revision with a sand cast version of the block. The new 3rd gen sand cast block gives a more uniform finish in the block and is less prone to cracking found in the lost foam castings. GM didn't just stop there though with that improvements to this block, they also added more material to the inside of the block to strengthen the block internally. The most important upgrade however came to the cylinder bores themselves. The stock LE5/LE9 has floating cylinder bores, which mean that the top of the cylinder bores are not secured to the block, the new 3rd gen blocks added material at the top of the cylinder bores to bridge and stabilize the tops of the bores. This bridge also increased the amount of aluminum around the top of the bores to help strengthen the cylinders even more against higher cylinder pressures found with high horsepower builds.
The new engines are still built to order and we have some other options we have been testing, once we are confident with those we will be offering those also!
Built Slingshot 2.4L Ecotec Engine by DDMWorks
If you have any questions, just let me know,
Dave
