Mrs Zippy & I attended the 4th Annual Corvette & Employee Appreciation Day last Thursday. The show was held at the Corvette Engine Assembly Plant in St. Catherine's, Ontario. This is the ONLY plant that builds Corvette engines.

I was fortunate enough to get a spcial tour of the dyno test lab, and observed an LS6 engine running while we were there. The engine cycled thru a pre-programmed sequence and at WOT was pulling 472 bhp! Exhaust manifolds were cherry red! Talk about cool!!! I told the operator that I did the same work at Detroit Diesel Corporation, and he allowed me to enter the test cell!
After touring the dyno lab, we went back to the Car show, and re-entered the plant later for the actual engine assembly tour. Our group was at the piston loading station when the BIG BLACKOUT occurred. Luckily, the overhead skylights permitted enough light for us to exit the building.

OK, here's the Big Scoop: The plant manager addressed the crowd during the awards presentation and told us he could NOT give details about the C6 engine, but "think 4 and 5." My interpretation? 400+ hp for the base car, and 500+ hp for the next Z06!!! What do you think?
Another tour guide told us the LS1 engine will become the LS2, and the current LS6 will become the LS7....makes sense to me.
We also learned their will be new con rods in the next generation Vette engine. It will have a "floating piston pin" to minimize piston slap.

Highly recommend that you plan on this event for next year!

Zippy

Zippy said: OK, here's the Big Scoop: The plant manager addressed the crowd during the awards presentation and told us he could NOT give details about the C6 engine, but "think 4 and 5." Zippy

Here's hoping he meant...454/454 base

He most certainly did not mean 454 cubes. He was talking horsepower in round numbers.

Well that is certainly less fun!

The ultimate "less fun" is to set our expectations too high, only to have them dashed when we see the C6 delivered as a 6.0 liter, 410 HP (HP is my guess) in base form and 6.4 liter, 500 HP (HP is in very little doubt here).

I don't know about you all. But I want a Snake stomping , Porsche eating take no prisoners Z06 or Hi - Po or what ever they want to call it . With Displacement On Demand technology there is no reason we can't have this in a limited production super car from the factory and still meet CARB and CAFE. Instead of going to Lingenfelter or Mallet

I was fortunate enough to get a spcial tour of the dyno test lab, and observed an LS6 engine running while we were there.

Zippy, how did you know that was an LS6? It is too strong for me to be an LS6!

I talked with the test cell operator about what engine he was running and the answer was LS6.

Hope that helps!

Zippy

Way too strong for an LS6. I want to believe he gave you a cover story and it really was a test of a production run of the LS2! I don't want to believe it was an LS7. Certainly have trouble believing an LS6.

The problem is the power output just doesn't fit any of the engines we're expecting or we can get now.

I don't doubt your experience, I just believe we've got a mystery on our hands.

they were running a 375 hour durability test on the full floating wrist pins when i was there in july. the std C-6 engine on test was making over 400 HP. the std C-6 will be rated a 405 so not to piss off the owners of the older ZO-6s