Now i like this Wagon

[Wild one]

Is This Supercharged and Stroked LS-Swapped 1971 Chevy Malibu Wagon the Baddest in the Land?​

This 1,000-hp pro-touring 1971 Chevy Malibu wagon has all the right corner-carving moves.
Steven RuppWriterJun 19, 2024


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There’s a point in every project where it takes on a life of its own. This is one of them, and since it was my child, I get to go all first-person as the proud parent. The 1971 Malibu wagon you see here had several lives in its journey from bone-stock to crazy idea, to crazier idea, and as we built it over at Super Chevy magazine, many people had a hand in turning it into this pro-touring beast of a wagon.




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Stage One: Bolt-on Performance ​

It all started nearly two decades ago with a wagon owned by Yancy Johns. He had it painted Mustang Mineral Gray, added the Chevelle SS hood, and sent it to us for a basic bolt-on LS-swap and pro-touring work-over. Global West suspension, JRi shocks, and an LS3 crate engine backed by a Tremec Magnum really got the two-ton wagon moving, and even at that point, it was hanging well with many of the cars on the track. The 55-percent rear weight bias really helped the wagon launch well and stick the back tires. It was better than it should have been thanks to help from shops such as Best of Show Coachworks in Escondido, California, and Global West.

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Going a Different Route ​

So many Camaros and other common pro-touring builds were popping up that we thought (OK, I thought) it would be fun to go all out on a wagon build using the best stuff out there. Physics says there’s only so much you can do with two tons of mass, but our goal was to build one of the baddest pro-touring wagons out there. Besides, in a Camaro you’re expected to win; finishing well in a four-door family truckster makes you a hero.


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But those performance goals weren’t going to happen with the stock chassis, since bolt-on parts to fix geometry issues always involve compromise of some sort. Enter the Roadster Shop and their Fast Track chassis. In the end, the only parts reused were the wagon’s body and a few interior bits. The rest was sold off to someone with a similar wagon.

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Fixing Geometry With a Fast Track Chassis! ​

The Fast Track chassis gave us a solid, and rigid, foundation to build on. We wouldn’t have to worry about too much power or hard lateral changes in direction flexing and twisting stuff out of shape. We were also able to utilize 21st-century performance geometry and cutting-edge handling parts. We did a small tub on the wagon when cutting up the floor to fit the new chassis, but we stuck with the 295/40/18 Falken rear tires, since lower-profile tires just looked wonky on the massive wagon. We were also able to custom-size our Forgeline wheels to get a 273/35/18 tire up front. Double-adjustable RS-tuned Penske shocks were on all four corners, as were massive 15-inch Baer XTR brakes with thermal-lock pistons—after all, we had over 4,000 pounds of Chevy to slow down. We also went with Baer’s rear-axle floater system to solve the pad knockback issues that were sure to come up when yanking the 4,000 pound wagon through the twisties.

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Supercharged and Stroked Shafiroff LS3 ​

Given that objects at rest want to stay that way, weight was a huge issue. To overcome Newton’s first law of motion we wanted power—lots of power. To get there, we went to Shafiroff Racing Engines in New York for a boost-ready stroker LS3 build that would give us plenty of torque to battle the wagon’s inertia. Starting with a stock block from Scoggin-Dickey (SDPC) Shafiroff worked its magic with a Lunati stroker kit, coated Mahle pistons, and a whole lot of precise engine building talent to get the 415-inch short-block bulletproof and ready for some boost. Topping the short-block are a pair of AFR cathedral-port heads (which we prefer for boosted builds) and a valvetrain from Brian Tooley Racing (BTR). The star of this show is the BTR cam. As Brian Tooley explained, “The LSA on the cam for this engine was 117 due to the EVO being 66 degrees BBDC. So, the total specs were 231/248 117+5 for the cam in this build. The LSA is wide because we wanted to reduce overlap to make the car drive and idle better.” In short, it’s a cam that will play well with our intercooled ProCharger D-1SC supercharger and still have a silky-smooth idle and great drivability. The boosted stroker exhales through a set of custom-made Ultimate Headers into a custom TIG-welded stainless exhaust system by Muffler Man in Placentia, California. For a drive system we used ProCharger’s serpentine kit with a pro-touring-tuned PS pump from Turn One, a billet high-flow mechanical water pump from Meziere, and a Holley low-mount A/C kit to support the Vintage Air Sanden compressor. Naturally aspirated, the engine made 560 hp and 522 lb-ft of torque. With the ProCharger, on race gas, the combo spat out 983 hp at 6,400 rpm and 857 lb-ft of twist at 5,400 rpm! For the street, and premium pump gas, our plan was to tune the combo down to just over 700 crank hp—more than enough to get in trouble with.


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[Wild one]

All the Right Parts ​

Backing up the ProCharged and stroked Shafiroff 415-inch LS3 and rounding-out the drivetrain is an American Powertrain Tremec Magnum six-speed manual transmission with a Centerforce DYAD twin-disc clutch. This combo spins power back to the Strange aluminum third member through a GForce carbon-fiber driveshaft. The engine is kept cool via a radiator from Autorad and an Earl’s oil cooler, and Painless replaced all the wagon’s wiring with modern blade-style fuses. Rather than use a modded stock tank we kicked it up a notch with a custom 22-gallon Fuel Safe bladdered fuel cell hidden in the wagon’s rear storage well, with Holley pumps moving the gas forward to the stroker. Muffler Man in Placentia, California, stitched us up a custom 3-inch stainless exhaust system to maximize power and sweeten the sound.


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More Power With E85! ​

With the magazine gone the project sat a bit before heading off to Javier Leclerc in Oklahoma for the finishing touches. He thought more power would be more fun, so, working with David Deatsch at Deatschwerks, he came up with an E85 system centered around their brushless DW440 pump with a 40T billet bypass flex-fuel sensor bracket and AC Delco sensor. The combo put a very safe 860 horsepower and 780 lb-ft of torque to the tires! To play it safer, he also had Fabien Dominguez from Texas Drivetrain Performance do a Stage II build on the Tremec Magnum.


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For the interior, the pro-touring wagon runs Recaro front seats, and the rear seat, as well as the tubs and rear cargo area, were worked-over by Distinct Customs in Norman, Oklahoma. Vitals are tracked by a Dakota Digital dash and a Vintage Air system cuts through the oppressive Oklahoma summer heat. For tunes an Alpine head unit controls JL amps with Focal components.


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So, what do you do with a 4,000-pound, four-door, 1,000-hp Chevy wagon that can, in a pinch, pick up sheets of drywall at the local home improvement store? Everything. The wagon does effortless third-gear burnouts, but in fourth, due to the rear weight bias, the wagon rockets forward when the throttle is mashed. It’s a ride good for just about anything from a canyon cruise to a local autocross. Thanks to using the right parts, it’s one of the best riding and driving pro-touring cars we’ve been in, and there’s enough power—more than enough actually—to get the wagon off the line surprisingly fast. It’s a ride that screams to be taken on a long, hopefully curvaceous cruise, maybe even to a track event. And that is what pro-touring is all about.

Photos by Daniel Taylor DeWitt

 

[Wild one]

https://www.motortrend.com/features/1971-chevy-malibu-wagon-procharged-stroker-ls3-engine-swap/?eml=organic:eml:brz:20240622:1971-chevy:article:regstrd:owcst:mt&utm_source=braze&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=registered

 

[Dodge 1500 4X4]

I got carted around in one of those as a child, my mother being adventurous could not Handly that power.
Very nicely done Rick!!!