427 L71 motor

Wow

rodent '69 L71

Wow

rodent '69 L71

The L88 was even less powerful! Only a meager 430 HP:) At least they were lighter.

Al

'The L88 was even less powerful! Only a meager 430 HP:) At least they were lighter. Al'

REPLY: Actually, the L88 was 'advertised' at 430 h.p. ; reality was they put out between 540-560 bhp and idled at 1500 rpms. Radio and heater delete too.

Then along came the ZL-1 and kicked its ass to the side of the road. That's what 600 HP, actually rumored at 595, but who's counting, and 100 pounds less weight will do for you, but you only had to worry about 2 of them out there.

Dad

Sarcasm, Dave. See the :) in the sentence?

Old news, John. Maybe as old as 1966. Maybe older, since a lot of people wondered why the 427-450 hp in Sept 1965 suddenly became the 427-425 hp about a month later. And all the parts were the same but the decal.

The 435 was rated 430 hp at 5800 rpm. Wonder what it made at 6500 where it redlined?

The L88 was rated 430 at 4600 rpm. Rev it another 2000 rpm and see what it did.

BTW, they would only last about 12 hours at a bit over 7000 rpm, so the 6500 was a good redline for durability.

1. You have to worry about three.

Now which two are real is another question. :-)

There is the yellow ZL1 that Roger Judski at Roger's Corvette in Orlando has.

The orange ZL1 that John Mahler in PA has. And there is the white ZL1 that D&A Corvette restored back in the early '80s. (don't know where today.) Then there are many that were made. The red engineering one for drag racing,

1968. The white engineering one with flares for road racing, 1968. The Greenwood Corvettes. Who knows how many other road racing ones.

Could be any one of them, strange things happened in the late '60s and '70s and allot of weird car hit the road. How about a V8 powered Chevette or an aluminum V8 in a '66 Comet convertible. The only records I know of show 2 ZL-1 made it to the public and there is no doubt that some of the good racers got a few.

Even then I still doubt that you would see any of them on the road doing any red neck racing.

Dad

This begs the old question of engines out the back door. You run into an old Chevy racer of the '60s and he will swear on a stack of Bibles that he got stuff. Odds are he didn't, but the truth is so mixed up 40 years later, no one will ever know what did and didn't come out.

There were definitely engines out the back door to certain guys. The Greenwood brothers got a lot of stuff, but how much they bought and how much they didn't will never be known. And they did have a few ZL1s in cars.

Motion Performance used to run ads with the ZL-X engines that produced 600 hp or so and some outlandish price. How many sold?

So the fact that aluminum big blocks were out on the street in mass is not a question. Heck, in '76, I had a chance to buy a ZL1 in the crate for $3500. Everyone I talked to told me I was insane to even think twice, and the price was insane. I was insane to think twice, or three times or the 100 times I probably thought about it. I should have bought it on the first offer. That was the insane part - not buying. Everyone else didn't think so.