Quote:
Originally Posted by HawkeyeGeoff
Oh you mean the most reliable american made race engine ever produced? There's a reason why so many people do LS swaps into cars.
If someone said "pick one to drive 100k miles and track, you will be charged for maintenance by the track staff" I think 95% of us would pick a LT1/LS3/LS6/LS1 powered car any day.
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we're wasting time at this point. I considered buying a C7 Z51 as my dedicated track car but after reading about even those overheating on Vette forums I gave up.
I actually like Corvettes, unlike Porsches, so while I do enjoy tearing the Porsches apart here I don't like it when its about Vettes.
Everyone loves the LSx engines and says they're the best things ever, however, amateur race teams somehow prefer to stroke a S54 engine (a suicidal idea) than just swap one these dirt cheap, reliable and easy to mod engines.
According to people on this thread, the only explanation is these amateur race teams are idiots and refuse to acknowledge the superior reliability of modded LSx engines.
The explanation of why there are no fast Vettes in regular track days as well is also, undoubtedly, that people are idiots as well.
After years and hundreds of track days, I interpret the lack of fast Cayman GT4s as those cars not being fast. Likewise, that people prefer running the crappiest M3 of all time (the US E36) over Vettes at track days or AER races as a complete lack of reliability.
I also put that together with Car and Driver losing two of their C7 Z51 engines during their long term test and the infinite reports of Z06s overheating as those not being reliable either.
The overheating thing points to a symptom of a much larger problem which is -in my opinion- that these cars are made for Excel spreadsheet comparisons and 'check the box' feature lists and not for track use. That's why they didn't bother to check if it overheated or not, because their core audience doesn't give a damn.
The very last thing a modern Z06 needs is more power. But they just had to go and give it another hundred horses for the ZR1... why? Fix the damn Z06 and make it world class.
Vettes suffer the same market placement issue as the STi/Evo. They actually cost real money yet when you get into a M3 or a Golf R (lower performing but in the ballpark price-wise) you usually end up with one of those.