[Ofnaman1]

So, we originally built the truck with a L96 6.0 (stock engine, headers, and a tune), it had a 6l90e trans and a 12 bolt truck rear end (3.73 gears, auburn posi), and a complete frame off rebuild. It was great. The truck performed like you would expect, and got great fuel mileage (when we could keep our foot out of it). We really only put about 1700 miles on it in that form. We took it to Hot August Nights 2017 built like that and had great feedback from people. Shortly after that the decision was made that the truck needs more power. What started out as a "lets add a turbo to it" snowballed into what we actually did. I started researching turbo kits and engine parts. If we were going to build the truck again, I wanted it to be right. The L96 is actually a great engine to build off of as it already pretty much has ls3 heads on it and a good block. The problem we kept running into was the 6l90 and the factory wiring/ecm. To be honest, the setup was so good I just did not want to tear it apart, but rather build something else and keep this for a future project.

That's when we start getting into the LS9 stuff.... I just happened to have a complete LS9 (super charger to oil pan) in my garage that needed a rebuild (dropped a valve on #2 and destroyed the bank 2 head and all the bank 2 cylinders/pistons). Instead of tearing the 6.0 apart and building it, we decided to go the ls9 route and save the 6.0/6l90 combo for another project, but as soon as bills started coming in for the ls9 build, we ended up selling the 6.0/6l90 combo and the 12 bolt out of the truck. Most people are not aware of this (even the machine shop guy's....), but the LS9 is completely different than any other LS based engine, like, everything is different, and is pretty much ls9 specific. Yes, you can interchange parts with other ls engines, but to keep it pretty much all ls9 it is really spendy.


I started the LS9 engine build by doing as much research on this engine as I could before ordering anything. The LS9 uses a LS9 specific block, crank, rods, pistons and heads, and the stock components are really good. We took the block to the machine shop to have it checked, and got good news. The block only needed a minor overbore to clean up the damaged cylinders. So we started gathering parts. I wanted to keep the stock titanium rods as they are really strong and light. In order to do that we had to have custom pistons made. You can get overbore pistons from GM for the LS9's but as a GM employee, they still would have cost me $3500 for 8 of them.... We ended up having stock compression Carillo pistons made (still cost $1800....). We had the factory crank balanced at the machine shop as well. Once we got the engine back, I started assembling it. The engine has factory billet main caps, so I just got a set of arp studs for the mains and called it good, I was able to use normal LS main studs, they are the same for all ls engines. I also used arp rod bolts (same for the LS7 and LS9). The head studs however, are different. The ls9 uses 12mm studs, so we had to order a set up from Katech (they are arp studs, but you can only order them from Lingenfelter or Katech). We had to buy one new head as the bank 2 head was beyond repair. I bought a bare head and replaced the titanium intake valves and steel exhaust valves with new stock units. I used comp cams double valve springs (I cannot remember the # off the top of my head) and tool steel retainers on them. I then installed a Lingenfelter GT9 cam and used Chevrolet performance 8000 rpm lifters in it. The crankshaft uses a 9 bolt flywheel, and there is only one company that makes a flexplate for the ls9 that I could find, JW. I installed that, and had to buy 2 sets of arp LS flexplate bolts to mount it. Moving on to the supercharger, we modified it with the Lingenfelter snout and 2.35 pulley. Mounted it with arp studs. As of right now it has stock injectors in it (soon to be changed). We decided to be different and actually run the dry sump oil system. That was challenging, but I like the way it turned out.