Car Craft
Deep within the bowels of GM Small Truck Engineering, in the Advanced Product Development Group, a small group of engineers decided to play with an S10. The result is an all-wheel-drive demon packing an all-aluminum V6. If it looks like a Syclone replacement, smells like a Syclone replacement and goes like a Syclone replacement, say put it into production.
Starting with an aluminum 90-degree Vortec V6 block from the GM Performance Parts bin, the small-truck guys stuffed it full of 11.0:1 pistons and topped it with aluminum heads and a Halley ProJection 4 fuel-injection system. It hasn’t been on the dyno yet, but 315 horsepower seems a reasonable estimate of output despite the fact that it displaces a puny 4.3 liters. But exhaling through a true dual exhaust and a DynoMax dual-in/dual-out muffler, it’s nowhere near emissions-legal. The idea is tantalizing, though, and we wish GM would investigate the possibilities.
The engine sends its power back to the stock New Venture five-speed manual transmission, then back to the same Borg-Warner transfer case used in the all-wheel-drive big-block truck also featured here. From there it goes to the stock rearend, which wears the disc brakes from a Z28. Up front, the Corvette front discs were adapted to the stock S10 4WD hubs. The front suspension …
