Face the facts: if a man knows enough about anything to write a book about it, he’s probably an expert (or darn close). The hours upon hours of research, writing, revising, and writing some more builds a familiarity that simply cannot be forged any other way. For BTR Performance’s Bill Trovato of Rochester, New York, that particular niche of expertise just happened to be building horsepower from a relatively unorthodox platform: the Oldsmobile V-8.
Not that the Oldsmobile power plants were or are poor performers, per se—it is just that the scarcity and price of high performance Olds parts make them a bit of a novelty for most drag racers and high performance street machine enthusiasts alike. Nevertheless, Trovato managed to make a name for himself with over 30-years of drag racing experience, and he literally wrote the book on the most effective ways to squeeze horsepower from the Oldsmobile platform (How to Build Max-Performance Oldsmobile V-8s, 2010, CarTech Books).
That said, when Trovato decided it was time to build a new car to compete in the NMCA Xtreme Street class shortly after the publication of his book, he knew he wanted something that was bulletproof, easy to maintain, and relatively easy to squeeze ponies from. As a result, the well-recognized and highly respected Oldsmobile expert put together a 438 ci… Chevrolet LSX?
In a word: yep. The first order of business was to build a car suitable for nearly four digits of naturally-aspirated bowtie horsepower. Trovato opted for a fifth-generation Camaro bodyin-white sourced from Scoggin-Dickey Chevrolet in fabulous Lubbock, Texas. The bare shell was delivered to Dillinger Pro Car (DPC), where the crew of Patrick Budd, Nick Carleton, and Chris Panny got to work on a class-legal 10.5 setup that would hug the pavement and provide plenty of straight-line hook for the new-gen Bowtie engine…. Read more of this article. Just click on the digital feature below this introduction.
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