Bram,
Im not an expert but having watched my son(18) grenade a 5.7 liter ls1(2002 camaross). The car had 125000 miles, broke a rod and punched through the engine block and pan. He decided to go with the ls2 6.0 liter block and build it up from there. I learned a lot from him, these cylinder blocks do not have very thick bore liners in them and the ls2's I believe are much more desirable. He does all his own machine work so he took the block out to 4.005 and installed a stroker crank and weisco rotating assembly from a company called K1. So I imagine its probably somewhere over 400 cubes now. No clearancing to the engine block to fit the crank, the biggest problem we had was getting the reluctor wheel to spin true with less than .010 run out. They press the wheel on the crank and it runs out like 1/16" send it back to them and they return it at .040, very frustrating, pressed one on ourselves, chocked it up in the crank grinder and tap tap tap until its straight, got to check everything these days. And the nice thing is the ls2 will fit the ls3 heads with the larger square ports. These heads flow pretty well dead stock and all he did was pressure check them and install his springs to match his cam, crazy cheap for the heads like 300.00 a piece new from gm. Tons of take off ls3 manifolds out there cheap from all the maggy SC conversions going on. Stock ls1 computor and 24 tooth reluctor will get it running with a new tune. Should make a fair amount of torque. I think theres a lot more options with the ls2 and possibly a bit more durability.
Probably more info than you need but having slightly modified my ls7 and helping my son go through this build gives me a real good perspective on this engine platform that gm designed. Im an old school guy having built tons of sb/bb chevys. These LS engines are great technology, just the new design gaskets they use are light years ahead of the old stuff, I cant imagine a chevy not leaking oil, they solved it.
Rich
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