The LS9 Motor Rebuild: A Journey to Perfection

As we embark on our journey to rebuild and upgrade the iconic C-5 unicorn, we're met with an unexpected challenge - the LS9 motor has been pulled out. We can't help but joke about how it's still within GM specs for less than a thousand horsepower, but we know better. The reality is that this motor has seen its fair share of use and abuse, and it's time to give it a fresh new life. Our first stop was John Wishman's shop, where we inspected the damage and decided to send all the blower-related components, including the heat exchanger bricks, out for repair. It turns out that the bricks had disintegrated over time due to wear and tear, so we sent them off to Greg Kong-kong Performance, aka the "Zr1 God," who's known for his expertise in repairing high-performance motors.

We asked around on the Zr1 forum for advice on how to proceed with the rebuild, and everyone unanimously recommended contacting Greg. We took their word for it and went along with his recommendations. The result is a brand-new motor that's been rebuilt with GP tuning 2.5-stage cam, which should give us a nice balance between performance and streetability. We're also exploring options to upgrade the clutch to triple-disc setup, just in case we need an extra layer of protection.

Next, we headed over to Wishman Performance to inspect the damage done to the transmission during the LS9 motor removal process. The trans was subjected to a lot of stress, so we decided to go ahead with a rebuild at RPM (6RP) and a stock rebuild on the rest of the transmission, including the 6R60. We're expecting some nice shifts and improved performance as a result.

The Unicorn's Journey: A Story of Evolution

We can't help but reminisce about the unicorn's journey so far. This car was almost perfect factory, but we wanted to push it beyond its limits. The addition of a turbocharger has opened up new possibilities for power and performance. However, with great power comes great responsibility, and we've learned that this motor needs regular maintenance to keep it running smoothly.

We're not done yet! We'll be heading over to the Spank Bank in the coming weeks to inspect the damage on the transmission and motor, and of course, test out our new upgrades. With any luck, the unicorn will come back to life as a beast of a car that can take on even the toughest challenges.

A Visit with Greg Kong-kong Performance

We stopped by Greg Kong-kong Performance's shop to check on the status of our motor rebuild and to see how it was coming along. As we walked in, we were greeted by the sights and smells of a high-performance shop - the air was thick with the smell of motor oil, spark plugs, and burnt offerings to the engine gods.

Greg showed us around his workshop, pointing out all the components that needed attention, including the rebuilt heat exchanger bricks. He explained how they'd been repaired using a combination of Molly rings and chrome plating. We were impressed by the level of care and attention to detail that went into rebuilding this motor. It's clear that Greg knows what he's doing when it comes to high-performance engines.

With any luck, our motor rebuild will be complete soon, and we'll have the unicorn back on the road in no time. Stay tuned for more updates from the world of Spank Bank - it's going to be a wild ride!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey welcome back to the unicorn blog it's been a long time since I talked to you and you'll notice there are actually no Corvettes and there's a no warehouse in my garage and you're about to find out why we're gonna get your cup speed on where the unicorns out and where this me thinks that my c6 zr1 get Fred Matt with me we're heading to Lincoln they repair the wrong color much better headlight covers are all oh that's cool does that go in the GTL oh my god are you serious going yeah twin for money Yates that's that's a new set up so we're here to finally update our fans on the unicorn perfect and spank bank too but there's been a lot that's changed well here she is she's well underway hey nice it still smell a little I'm sure I'm sure they'll always be there so before we get to the upgrades fixes a lot of stuff just to catch you up if you haven't seen the unicorn before this car has a Thompson Motorsports engines 370 cubic inch with her on speed twin turbo kit that's tucked up underneath it and then we have the RPM rear end and transmission because it's a 6-speed manual which makes it a lot of fun it's a little slower because of that but it's just a solid car and if you missed it the last video we did the car had a fire and we're fixing a lot of stuff making some upgrades so let me get back for a chosen 18 season so we're gonna go over the changes which had here it was a long project because we had to figure out a lot of stuff as we're going because there aren't a whole lot of stick shift twin turbo Corvettes out there that's good to fix a few things here and there so obviously we had the fire and we're fixing a lot of things to prevent that from happening and the other big changes we're adding safety stuff that we didn't put in because the end of the project we just didn't have time didn't think we're gonna need it first but so we're looking over here fassl is nice enough to give us a new intake top very place yeah the one that melted redid the fuel fuel system in this area because the the fire came from the fuel injector oring right here and we did new fuel rails these are a one-piece rail that are gonna bolt directly onto the intake the other one that have like some tabs on it that were it will deflect if it made them part of the issue so replace the injectors getting thicker than Amex injectors the for fuel rails fast sentencing intake top to replace that to prevent the fire from spreading or happening that long putting in as a seat craft yep so there's our fire suppression and this came with two nozzles for the engine bay like one on each side and then has one has a driver compartment so not the passenger I know we're relocating the battery oh yeah so the the fire came from they're from leaky fuel injector ring ignited off the headers but then because I didn't have a battery cutoff and I was in a hurry to get out of the car the ignition stayed on causing the fuel to keep pumping out of the fuel system until I realized shut it off so the battery cutoff is gonna make it so the Trent guys know to cut that and actually what I ended up getting was with the battery back there I found a solid-state box for the battery cutoff so it's it's electric so basically it'll be a kill switch back there and then we'll have one in sight too so you can even kill it from inside so that works out nice that way the package is better that way I don't have to worry about having a big handle with that yeah switch it just uses a switch and you can put your own push off so sweet yeah I wondered that yesterday it's a lot of lemonade from the fire continuing to spread I had a fire extinguisher in the car you don't really see in the video I used that as much as I could but it was just spraying fuel out so if the power is cut hit the fire suppression which will be a pull lever in the car it's gonna everything out immediately should be really nice other safety stuff we're doing we've got the cage rpm roll bar cage and that'll be going in here shortly another safety thing we got rock-solid Motorsports parachute amount that's gonna go behind the bumper through the license plate we're at the center and then something like that that way we get a strobe parachute going on that we'll be doing that up Joey she's not a pet person yesterday and we were just watching a video on how to do it and so Stroud's got a nice video that she's put along this personal yeah he needs it you're gonna eat our friends at must of our concepts that did like the custom intake piping they repainted and buffed the panels that got burn it's pretty much just a headlight the hood they got it real bad yeah they just needed a little bit and then the headlight covers so that's all fixed up yeah the fire was and the fire was like secluded mainly mainly here like the injector or ring was popped out and there was spraying fuel up over the intake and then down through the side it's like everything in this area the firewall is all charred and then it was like exiting how the fender whether it's air like there's the airflow from the front grille over the motor out the fenders that's how the engineer did there's a lot of changes we're doing that like we just didn't have time to do before the big race of Cletus Victor VA especially down in Texas who made the custom lower control arms to fix our alignment issue but we had to rush those to get in rather than making adjustable was it like a turnbuckle as part of the lower control arm they were just playing it on the end so in order to make any adjustments I had to basically take the whole control arm out every time to adjust this will save you an hour - and alignment huge that's a big in right there so Jenna had this badass custom throttle body who made had laser engraved this is the Nick Williams throttle body and we were having issues with getting the throttle body to work on under boost and we should have called Nick Williams because it turns out he had a motor upgrade that he could have put on here to make it work some beautiful another upgrade we're doing is I had the arc steam cloud and we operated the next step up because the tricky part with this car is eating it to slip and probably about 30 percent of time was able to maybe less when I did a continued slipping so I just didn't have enough much in there to handle a thousand or 11 or horsepower or whatever as it's going down the track so we're upgrading that but I got addicted to the 60-foots and watching this thing and we have a lot more to improve on that it's gonna be crazy but we all set to keep up with getting oil through the motor so we've got a new oil pan let's get some traps in there to make sure the oil pressure stays up there because we're spent at the pre high rpm yeah seventy two hundred and making our friends at Thompson Motorsports a little nervous so we hey you're like maybe a little insurance so it's the perfect time to make those upgrades to well I think that wraps that most of stuff we're doing on the car should have it ready in a few weeks here I'm still not sure I want to take it TX to K hopefully where I'm gonna take it next time off the build race it because we're just working full time there I also have to find a trailer for it because we're taking two trailers one's gonna be done at Bounty Hunter's or we'll be filming and then heading over TX UK and I've got another trailer it comes down with merchandise so I gotta find another trailer in a truck so if I do that I'll bring it down and have a little fun with it down there now I mentioned that I also have my other Corvette here so that my garage is pretty empty which is nice but the spank bank is under construction - not for the same reasons at all but I've owned that car for four years and it's just had a lot of wear on it I think in those four years applied made about four or five six now probably close to a thousand pulls in it like every time I take it out you gotta take a few make a few pulls in it are we able to get to it check in with those bang bang I haven't seen that car for a while the valence this thing's a piece of junk he's probably to give it to me instead alright so the spank links a little worn out I took it to the half mile and mile-an-hour wasn't quite what I was thinking it would be and it was especially noticeable when we went up Pikes Peak the next day the back bumper started looking like this so chanted the compressional test on it and mostly the saunders worked great but one almost Harawira showed on the plug you were putting in quite a bit yeah it was a quart half every less than a thousand it's still within GM specs I'm just kidding we've poured out the ls9 and of course while we're doing that and we'll be a few upgrades so to go through what we're doing help me if I can't remember because we're building to rebuilding two cars right now but pulled ls9 out so there's no motor in there right now and john Wishman we're gonna go to his shop and a little bit to check out the damage it wasn't terrible but I think it's been damaged for a few years because the heat exchanger bricks they kind of disintegrate when they wear down so we sent all the blower stuff including the bricks out to Greg kong-kong performance and he's like the zr1 god I went to zr1 forum to ask like what should i do well I'm rebuilding the motor just freshening things up and everyone just said just ask Greg and do what he says so it's very much what I'm doing he's part of the snout the blower snout the throttle body the blower and then he's rebuilding the bricks just for a tan insurance so we don't end up sending metal back through another very expensive motor but we're gonna do GP tuning 2.5 stage cam so it's not gonna be a crazy track car sound but it's gonna have a nice little loop to it which will be which will be awesome the clutch is slipping it's been there for three or four years and it wasn't really built to handle a lot of abuse at the power we're at so I'm gonna do I'm looking at options maybe you wanna triple disc street triple just setups just for nice insurance and then we're basically doing a stock rebuild on the motor and we'll check that out a little bit talk to Wishman on that the transmissions at rpm they're doing the same build stage 6rp and transmission build on the tr6060 so it's going to shift real nice that's what I was that's was I said it early on in the unicorn vlog this car was almost perfect factory but it's a boosted car so you can't have to play with a little bit so I'm going to continue to add a little more power to it because we got everything apart I'm guessing 750 and a lot of people are gonna scream at me because I got everything apart why not make it a thousand well I've got a thousand horsepower turbo car over here this is the car that I want to just take out on the street track beat on put it back in the garage and not have to worry about and that's the way it's been for the most part for the last four years and that's why I like it so 750 minded up being a little little over that should be plenty of fun so I think that's pretty much everything we're doing the spank bank and check out the damage the motor on everything you see yeah this thing can't be probably does bang a 1/2 on the street in the 60-foot so it's gonna be a beast and blurr actually came back from Kong performance to Saturday sore unboxing now oh yeah ooh that's pretty oh yelling down there huh damn here the pro at what he does I guess I shouldn't be giving away too many of the secrets just kidding we can't you can't oh my gosh it's hung up in there that's where it's going that's gonna be cool all right sand by the unicorn and we're now heading to Wishman performance to check on the motor and see the damage here we go so well we got here yeah the whole power stuff looks a lot I didn't recognize it dirty as hell yeah I still mag powder in the cylinders from making sure they weren't cracked or anything to catch them so what did you find when you're going through this well it had a bunch of trash run through it they'd actually sorta seat in the cylinders kind of just scratched out everywhere so well it was burning a ton of oil yeah the between the stuff running through it and then the the rings are the Molly was flaking out of the ring really you see how its pieces are missing basically that's a Molly this one face that looked off of it basically it was either Molly or chrome plating they use don't know but yep we got the new king DP tuning yep they have taking really good care of us Wow thank you very much guys all right well that's it from the unicorn c-5 vlog update and spank bank next time you see the cars the unicorn should be running and before you take it to tx2 Pam will get bounty hunters and San Antonio before that the x2k is our biggest event of the year a lot of craziness exactly I'll see you guys next timehey welcome back to the unicorn blog it's been a long time since I talked to you and you'll notice there are actually no Corvettes and there's a no warehouse in my garage and you're about to find out why we're gonna get your cup speed on where the unicorns out and where this me thinks that my c6 zr1 get Fred Matt with me we're heading to Lincoln they repair the wrong color much better headlight covers are all oh that's cool does that go in the GTL oh my god are you serious going yeah twin for money Yates that's that's a new set up so we're here to finally update our fans on the unicorn perfect and spank bank too but there's been a lot that's changed well here she is she's well underway hey nice it still smell a little I'm sure I'm sure they'll always be there so before we get to the upgrades fixes a lot of stuff just to catch you up if you haven't seen the unicorn before this car has a Thompson Motorsports engines 370 cubic inch with her on speed twin turbo kit that's tucked up underneath it and then we have the RPM rear end and transmission because it's a 6-speed manual which makes it a lot of fun it's a little slower because of that but it's just a solid car and if you missed it the last video we did the car had a fire and we're fixing a lot of stuff making some upgrades so let me get back for a chosen 18 season so we're gonna go over the changes which had here it was a long project because we had to figure out a lot of stuff as we're going because there aren't a whole lot of stick shift twin turbo Corvettes out there that's good to fix a few things here and there so obviously we had the fire and we're fixing a lot of things to prevent that from happening and the other big changes we're adding safety stuff that we didn't put in because the end of the project we just didn't have time didn't think we're gonna need it first but so we're looking over here fassl is nice enough to give us a new intake top very place yeah the one that melted redid the fuel fuel system in this area because the the fire came from the fuel injector oring right here and we did new fuel rails these are a one-piece rail that are gonna bolt directly onto the intake the other one that have like some tabs on it that were it will deflect if it made them part of the issue so replace the injectors getting thicker than Amex injectors the for fuel rails fast sentencing intake top to replace that to prevent the fire from spreading or happening that long putting in as a seat craft yep so there's our fire suppression and this came with two nozzles for the engine bay like one on each side and then has one has a driver compartment so not the passenger I know we're relocating the battery oh yeah so the the fire came from they're from leaky fuel injector ring ignited off the headers but then because I didn't have a battery cutoff and I was in a hurry to get out of the car the ignition stayed on causing the fuel to keep pumping out of the fuel system until I realized shut it off so the battery cutoff is gonna make it so the Trent guys know to cut that and actually what I ended up getting was with the battery back there I found a solid-state box for the battery cutoff so it's it's electric so basically it'll be a kill switch back there and then we'll have one in sight too so you can even kill it from inside so that works out nice that way the package is better that way I don't have to worry about having a big handle with that yeah switch it just uses a switch and you can put your own push off so sweet yeah I wondered that yesterday it's a lot of lemonade from the fire continuing to spread I had a fire extinguisher in the car you don't really see in the video I used that as much as I could but it was just spraying fuel out so if the power is cut hit the fire suppression which will be a pull lever in the car it's gonna everything out immediately should be really nice other safety stuff we're doing we've got the cage rpm roll bar cage and that'll be going in here shortly another safety thing we got rock-solid Motorsports parachute amount that's gonna go behind the bumper through the license plate we're at the center and then something like that that way we get a strobe parachute going on that we'll be doing that up Joey she's not a pet person yesterday and we were just watching a video on how to do it and so Stroud's got a nice video that she's put along this personal yeah he needs it you're gonna eat our friends at must of our concepts that did like the custom intake piping they repainted and buffed the panels that got burn it's pretty much just a headlight the hood they got it real bad yeah they just needed a little bit and then the headlight covers so that's all fixed up yeah the fire was and the fire was like secluded mainly mainly here like the injector or ring was popped out and there was spraying fuel up over the intake and then down through the side it's like everything in this area the firewall is all charred and then it was like exiting how the fender whether it's air like there's the airflow from the front grille over the motor out the fenders that's how the engineer did there's a lot of changes we're doing that like we just didn't have time to do before the big race of Cletus Victor VA especially down in Texas who made the custom lower control arms to fix our alignment issue but we had to rush those to get in rather than making adjustable was it like a turnbuckle as part of the lower control arm they were just playing it on the end so in order to make any adjustments I had to basically take the whole control arm out every time to adjust this will save you an hour - and alignment huge that's a big in right there so Jenna had this badass custom throttle body who made had laser engraved this is the Nick Williams throttle body and we were having issues with getting the throttle body to work on under boost and we should have called Nick Williams because it turns out he had a motor upgrade that he could have put on here to make it work some beautiful another upgrade we're doing is I had the arc steam cloud and we operated the next step up because the tricky part with this car is eating it to slip and probably about 30 percent of time was able to maybe less when I did a continued slipping so I just didn't have enough much in there to handle a thousand or 11 or horsepower or whatever as it's going down the track so we're upgrading that but I got addicted to the 60-foots and watching this thing and we have a lot more to improve on that it's gonna be crazy but we all set to keep up with getting oil through the motor so we've got a new oil pan let's get some traps in there to make sure the oil pressure stays up there because we're spent at the pre high rpm yeah seventy two hundred and making our friends at Thompson Motorsports a little nervous so we hey you're like maybe a little insurance so it's the perfect time to make those upgrades to well I think that wraps that most of stuff we're doing on the car should have it ready in a few weeks here I'm still not sure I want to take it TX to K hopefully where I'm gonna take it next time off the build race it because we're just working full time there I also have to find a trailer for it because we're taking two trailers one's gonna be done at Bounty Hunter's or we'll be filming and then heading over TX UK and I've got another trailer it comes down with merchandise so I gotta find another trailer in a truck so if I do that I'll bring it down and have a little fun with it down there now I mentioned that I also have my other Corvette here so that my garage is pretty empty which is nice but the spank bank is under construction - not for the same reasons at all but I've owned that car for four years and it's just had a lot of wear on it I think in those four years applied made about four or five six now probably close to a thousand pulls in it like every time I take it out you gotta take a few make a few pulls in it are we able to get to it check in with those bang bang I haven't seen that car for a while the valence this thing's a piece of junk he's probably to give it to me instead alright so the spank links a little worn out I took it to the half mile and mile-an-hour wasn't quite what I was thinking it would be and it was especially noticeable when we went up Pikes Peak the next day the back bumper started looking like this so chanted the compressional test on it and mostly the saunders worked great but one almost Harawira showed on the plug you were putting in quite a bit yeah it was a quart half every less than a thousand it's still within GM specs I'm just kidding we've poured out the ls9 and of course while we're doing that and we'll be a few upgrades so to go through what we're doing help me if I can't remember because we're building to rebuilding two cars right now but pulled ls9 out so there's no motor in there right now and john Wishman we're gonna go to his shop and a little bit to check out the damage it wasn't terrible but I think it's been damaged for a few years because the heat exchanger bricks they kind of disintegrate when they wear down so we sent all the blower stuff including the bricks out to Greg kong-kong performance and he's like the zr1 god I went to zr1 forum to ask like what should i do well I'm rebuilding the motor just freshening things up and everyone just said just ask Greg and do what he says so it's very much what I'm doing he's part of the snout the blower snout the throttle body the blower and then he's rebuilding the bricks just for a tan insurance so we don't end up sending metal back through another very expensive motor but we're gonna do GP tuning 2.5 stage cam so it's not gonna be a crazy track car sound but it's gonna have a nice little loop to it which will be which will be awesome the clutch is slipping it's been there for three or four years and it wasn't really built to handle a lot of abuse at the power we're at so I'm gonna do I'm looking at options maybe you wanna triple disc street triple just setups just for nice insurance and then we're basically doing a stock rebuild on the motor and we'll check that out a little bit talk to Wishman on that the transmissions at rpm they're doing the same build stage 6rp and transmission build on the tr6060 so it's going to shift real nice that's what I was that's was I said it early on in the unicorn vlog this car was almost perfect factory but it's a boosted car so you can't have to play with a little bit so I'm going to continue to add a little more power to it because we got everything apart I'm guessing 750 and a lot of people are gonna scream at me because I got everything apart why not make it a thousand well I've got a thousand horsepower turbo car over here this is the car that I want to just take out on the street track beat on put it back in the garage and not have to worry about and that's the way it's been for the most part for the last four years and that's why I like it so 750 minded up being a little little over that should be plenty of fun so I think that's pretty much everything we're doing the spank bank and check out the damage the motor on everything you see yeah this thing can't be probably does bang a 1/2 on the street in the 60-foot so it's gonna be a beast and blurr actually came back from Kong performance to Saturday sore unboxing now oh yeah ooh that's pretty oh yelling down there huh damn here the pro at what he does I guess I shouldn't be giving away too many of the secrets just kidding we can't you can't oh my gosh it's hung up in there that's where it's going that's gonna be cool all right sand by the unicorn and we're now heading to Wishman performance to check on the motor and see the damage here we go so well we got here yeah the whole power stuff looks a lot I didn't recognize it dirty as hell yeah I still mag powder in the cylinders from making sure they weren't cracked or anything to catch them so what did you find when you're going through this well it had a bunch of trash run through it they'd actually sorta seat in the cylinders kind of just scratched out everywhere so well it was burning a ton of oil yeah the between the stuff running through it and then the the rings are the Molly was flaking out of the ring really you see how its pieces are missing basically that's a Molly this one face that looked off of it basically it was either Molly or chrome plating they use don't know but yep we got the new king DP tuning yep they have taking really good care of us Wow thank you very much guys all right well that's it from the unicorn c-5 vlog update and spank bank next time you see the cars the unicorn should be running and before you take it to tx2 Pam will get bounty hunters and San Antonio before that the x2k is our biggest event of the year a lot of craziness exactly I'll see you guys next time\n"