I must apologize up front for my lack of a proper introduction here. There's too much going on with Daren Wlodarczyk's '96 WS6-clone ragtop to expend much energy (not to mention precious magazine real estate) on the extraneous. Is it imperative to know that Daren is a reformed street racer who decided that his car had too much power for the street? Were you interested in Daren's motivation for making a convertible into, of all things, one of the fastest LT1 F-bodies in the country? Did you hope to pity Daren because he can't catch a race in the greater Detroit metropolitan area anymore because he's so stinking fast? Sorry, we haven't got the space.
Truth be told, the raw numbers on the Shelby Township, Michigan resident's bad Bird tell a fine story themselves. A 1.565 60-foot, en route to a 10.746 second ET at 127.85 mph. And that's before the nitrous! Add a little laughing gas and you're looking at a stout 811 rear-wheel horsepower at 5400 on the dyno. A gut-tightening 928 lb.-ft. of torque at 4500 rpm is delivered to the wheels, resulting in a 1.372 60-foot and an eyebrow-raising 9.763 at an eyeball-flattening 138.49 miles per hour. "Look for more power next year," says Daren. Oy!
And I'm sure that you want to know, in a 3,700-pound convertible, that he still drives on the street; how in the hell does he do it?
You can blame Agostino Racing of Pickering, Ontario, Canada for the ridiculous performance available at the twitch of the right ankle. Start with a '97 GM LT1 splayed block, bore out the cylinders to 4.040 inches each, drop in a Lunati forged steel stroker (3.875-inch) crank and you're looking at 398 cubes to start with. Mix well with 5.85-inch Lunati rods and custom domed Ross pistons that have been valve-relieved to work with the AFR 227 Stage 3 heads (fully race-ported by Agostino and flowing 330 cfm at .650 lift), and you're looking at a street-livable 10.5:1 compression. The idle is smoother than a shot of Tennessee whiskey, thanks to an ARE solid-lifter nitrous-grind cam. And no, they're not talking specifics.
An ACCEL DFI computer controls (well, directionally unleashes) and monitors all vital functions. Feeding the beast is handled via a custom hand-made 5-inch cold-air intake blowing through a 5-inch K&N filter, an ASM monoblade 1300 cfm throttle body, and an LT4 intake ported to match the head ports. A dual-sump fuel system with twin Aeromotive regulators, featuring an 1,100 hp Paxton pump on gas and a Holley 250 pump that kicks in exclusively in conjunction with the nitrous, feed 55 lb./.hr. ACCEL fuel injectors. The nitrous is a single-stage NOS direct-port fogger system, using jets that are supposed to be good for 300 hp. Ignition is, ahem, the stock Optispark ... fortified with an MSD 6AL box, 8mm wires, with NGK plugs. A Messier electric water pump circulates the wet stuff through a lightweight Be-Cool aluminum radiator. The battery, now an Optima dry cell unit, was relocated to the trunk, and given an external Flaming River shutoff switch.
One twist of the key, and the sound is all mad organist practicing his creepy chords in an empty church: powerful, haunting, achingly beautiful, full of repressed angst, ready to lash out at any moment. Hooker long-tube headers (1 3/4 primaries) blow through an H-crossover pipe and twin mandrel-bent three-inch stainless pipes; Flow Path stainless mufflers dump just ahead of the rear axle and are at least partly responsible for the ensuing near-religious experience.
All that power is fed through an ARE-built Turbo-400, which has been fortified with a new TCI first gear (2.75:1), a Yank 4000-stall converter, two Pro Cool trans coolers, and a Hurst Line-Loc. The manual valve body is controlled via a B&M ratchet shifter, and power exits via a 3-inch ARE chrome-moly drive shaft with Spicer yokes and U-joints. Of course, a driveshaft loop is present, just in case.