I was talking to a friend last night about building an engine for my car. He mentioned one reason why the LT1's were able to run close to 12:1 compression on pump gas without problems is the reverse flow cooling. Being that there aren't too many block differences between the LT1 and the Gen I SBC, could the LT1 reverse cooling be adapted to the SBC? I know for sure you can build an electric water pump for very cheap so driving the pump wouldn't be a problem. I searched all over the place on here and google and found absolutely nothing. Anyone?

 

it already is used on tpi

 

GROAN!
No it's not dippo, don't answer if you don't know what you're talking about eh? Spreading misinformation on these boards is heresy, punishable by internet whipping!

LT1's have VAST block differences, that's why they could do reverse flow cooling. No, you cannot adapt it to an SBC. That is why they could run damn close to 10.5:1, not 12:1 - lets not get too crazy here.

TPI (and later 1987 + SBC's) used "reverse rotation" water pumps. They spun backwards, the water still flowed the same way through the block.

You can use LT1 heads on an SBC engine, by machining and modifying them to be regular flow coolant heads. Kinda defeating the purpose of course...

 

the reverse rotation is what i meant it didnt hit me fully that he was talking about reverse flow i guess.. ie heads to block.. oops my bad no need to call someone out on not knowing what theyre talking about.. but you could run 12.1 on pump gas daily driven no problems if you build it right.. i know this for a fact because its what a lot of the cars i work on all day every day run

 

I was meaning 12:1 after heads and cam work. I know they run 10.5:1 stock.

What problems would be caused by just putting an LT1 waterpump on? I am not familiar with the design of the SBC coolant ports but hypothetically I don't see a problem with just simply pushing the coolant backwards.