Brawny Daily Driver

We put an L8T truck engine into a '72 Nova and transform this plain-Jane cruiser

- JOHN MCGANN

This time on Car Craft Video, we venture into the world of direct injection and big-displacement modern engines that are readily available in the new and used marketplace. It used to be that one horsepower per cubic inch was pretty impressive in a street car. Now your average pickup truck is sporting that kind of power without even trying hard.

We're predicting Chevrolet's new L8T engine is going to be a very popular swap very soon. It displaces 6.6 liters, or 400 cubic inches, and is rated at 400 hp at 5,100 rpm and 464 lb-ft of torque at 4,000 rpm. The bore and stroke measure 4.060-inches and 3.860-inches respectively. The crankshaft is a forging which is great for power-adder applications, and the connecting rods are also promising, with a forged powdered-metal construction. The pistons are hyper eutectic, which makes sense in an engine intended to run quietly for many hundreds of thousands of miles. The stock hydraulic-roller cam specs out at 193/199 degrees of duration at 0.050-inch tappet lift and offers 0.500/0.490-inch lift at the valves. That's a mild cam by all accounts, but when you consider the size of the intake ports in those rectangle port cylinder heads, you see there is massive potential for power lurking in this package. The hollow-stem intake valves measure 2.130 inches, and the Inconel exhaust valves measure 1.590 inches. The rocker arms have a 1.8:1 ratio, and with a 10.8:1 compression ratio, this engine runs comfortably on 87-octane gasoline, thanks to precise fuel metering from the injection system. Pricing for this crate engine package is still to be determined from many retailers. We've seen prices around $9,500 for a ready-torun engine, but it is available as a long-block (minus the intake, PCV system, and water pump), and you can expect the cost to be lower this way. Our brand-new long-block was supplied by Scoggin-Dickey Parts Center.