MILL OF THE MONTH

457CI LS ENGINE

> MICHAEL KONSTANDINOU, CHELTENHAM, VICTORIA

FORCED induction is great. We love it, but there’s something pure and good about an insane naturally aspirated combo, and they don’t come much crazier than this 457ci LS built by BES Racing Engines in St Leon, Indiana.

Tony Bischoff and BES have won the Engine Masters Challenge several times, so it’s no surprise that Michael Konstandinou from ICE Ignitions in Cheltenham, Victoria would tap him on the shoulder for this build.

Tony has a long history with the Konstandinou brothers, having used Michael’s ICE ignition systems and John’s CHI heads for several of his winning builds.

Nowadays John is one half of the team behind CID Heads, the other half being Nathan Higgins, and Tony used a pair of their new LS7 heads for the engine you see here.

“The heads are CID AU LS7 castings,” John says, “but that’s where the similarity ends. The heads were supplied by Nathan semifinished [no valve guides or rocker stud holes machined], so Tony could develop the best inline LS head layout on the market today. They flow 460cfm through a 2.275in intake valve and have all new valve angles and locations, pushrod locations custom T&D rocker arms – all courtesy of BES Racing.”

The engine also uses one of CID’s wickedly tall BE-LS7 two-piece intakes, topped by a massive Dominator. Below the heads there’s a Dart block filled with all the top-shelf goodies, which in this case means a Bryant crank, Oliver rods, urally on’t 7ci n n ral d op arket 75in ngles and sy akes, elow th Ross pistons and a Comp solid-roller cam.

All up it’s good for 1104hp and 738lb-ft with the engine spinning to almost 9000rpm.

You can watch it being put through its paces on streetmachine.com.au.

So what do you do with 1100hp worth of naturally aspirated LS power? Throw it in a VN Commodore and go racing, of course.

Michael has purchased George Haddad’s old VN and he plans to have a crack at APSA’s True Street bracket with help from his sponsors TCE Torque Converters and Engine Master Australia. Can he beat Tony O’Connor’s current record of 8.53@158mph? Only time will tell. s

B R I G H T S P A R K S >

A new ICE Ignition frontdrive distributor system was developed for the engine, along with a 20A twin-coil system that they tested side-by-side with the standard single-coil 10A ICE unit. Apparently they both made the same power, but the twin-coil 20A system did it with less total timing