Words By: Chris Minshall
Epic. That is the only word that comes to mind after the last 7 days for Team Ksport!! After getting back from our 3000 mile road trip to Seattle and back we had some repairs to complete before we could head out to Las Vegas for Pro Am Round 4 / Formula Drift Round 6. We installed brand new axles and also decided to update the car a little bit with the newest & current version of our 13” big brake kit with 8 pot calipers up front and 4 pot out back. There was nothing wrong with our 5 year old big brake kit, but there have been some changes aesthetically to the caliper size and design. We also added a brand new hydraulic handbrake with its own separate reservoir and fixed all the OEM brake lines that failed on us in Seattle.
Our plans were to leave first thing Thursday morning and drive up to Vegas and participate in the optional practice session at the track. So last Wednesday night, Corey took the car to the Bondurant facility for some shake down runs just to make sure everything was good to go. I personally was not at the track that night since I put in a long night at the office getting ready plus had a ton of things to take care of at home before the trip. I received a phone call around 11pm from Nick asking me if I had talked to anyone that was at the track, I said no I haven’t. I asked why, he said “what’s the worst possible thing you can think of that could happen to the car?” I replied “uh, something happened to the engine?!?” He answered “Yep, motor blew up”.
Best sign of a blown engine? Look for a puddle like this under the car when you hear a loud unusual noise! Oil and coolant all mixed together, excellent!
This is also not a good sign! Hand Model – Corey Hosford
At this point I was in complete shock. With all the time and effort put into getting our team ready for this event I was at a loss for words. Luckily our head mechanic Todd Lowell who is the owner of Fueled Racing had an extra LS1 engine at his shop and was already getting it ready to be transported over to the Bondurant Facility.
At this point the crew had a choice to make. We either don’t go or we build a completely new motor, install it and make it to Vegas in less than 24 hours. Team KSport doesn’t quit. We put in WORK and get shit done! The choice was obvious.
Epic destruction pics of the old LS1. Piston to valve contact = affirmative!!
Yep, all that is NOT supposed to be in the oil pan!
More epic win destruction of the bottom end!
Hole in the cylinder wall! No bueno!
Hole in the outside of the block
So much for our plans to leave the Ksport USA headquarters in Gilbert, AZ by 9am lol! Unfortunately for us, this was not just going to be a simple task of dropping one engine out and throw the other one in. Our engine has a cam, valvetrain upgrade, rod bolts, etc. Plus our ECU is tuned specifically for our set up so we couldn’t just drop in a bone stock engine. Everything that was still salvageable had to be transferred over.
We had to sand down the camshaft since it had a small amount of damage…
The rod shot thru the oil pan and into the steering rack!! We had to replace the steering rack with a new unit…Don’t blame the nugget! It wasn’t his fault!
After pulling a late night myself and sleeping maybe 4 hours, I arrived to Bondurant around 8:30am to see Todd, Dylan and Corey still going on strong after being up the entire night. Empty cans of Redbull were scattered around the shop along with a couple boxes of some freakishly delicious donuts. We had to wait till the local parts stores opened so we could run around town getting parts we needed like ARP rod bolts, spark plugs, steering rack, another brake booster (the one we installed in Seattle turned out to be bad) and an OEM oil pan gasket. That ended up being 2.5 hours of running around to multiple stores across the Phoenix area. Once we got all the parts back to the shop it was the final stretch.
Old head with valvesprings removed…
New engine almost ready….
Parts for days!!!!!!!!
Redbulls were needed in mass quantity to help the crew pull an all nighter!!
The freakishly delicious donuts provided some additional energy at 8am for the crew….
Patiently waiting for her new heart transplant….Don’t worry sweet thannnnnng, everything will be fine in a few hours!
Around 1:30pm Nick and I headed back to the Ksport office to finish up some more work while patiently waiting for the car to be completed. We headed back up to Bondurant around 5:30pm and the crew was putting the finishing touches on the motor and getting it ready to crank over.
New engine all put together and ready to go in the car!
At around 6pm it was the moment we’ve all been waiting for…..the engine fired right up and ran perfect!! Just to think that 18hrs ago we had a blown to pieces LS1. The crew’s dedication to doing whatever it took to get this swap completed goes without saying. Our crew rocks!!! Period.
Quick iPhone 4 video of the start up of the new LS1!! She lives!
