One of the benefits of building a platform as popular as the LS or LT engines is the flood of information, from fellow racers and professional race shops alike, about how to reach whatever performance goals your heart desires. When Jason Leiva started planning for his ZL1 to push into the eights and eventually the sevens in the quarter-mile, the recipe for his drivetrain was unanimous: convert to either a Powerglide or a TH400 transmission. But sometimes, to push the boundaries and set some records, you have to put forth the extra work to think outside the box. That’s how this 6th generation ZL1 broke the 10L90 quarter-mile record.

Jason has been pushing his Camaro to go faster and faster for years on the dragstrip; if you haven’t seen his car before, here is a brief summary of what’s under the hood. A few years ago the original LT4 block suffered from a cracked sleeve, and after wrestling with the idea of building another LT4-based engine or maybe even an iron L8T block as the foundation for the next 1,400-plus horsepower build, Jason and the team at Vengeance Racing decided to have Late Model Engines build Jason a 427 cubic-inch LT.

Photos: Sean Chartier Media

The CPD 6.0-inch intake helps a 112mm Nick Williams throttle body feed enough air for this 427 to push almost 1,500-horsepower to the wheels.

LME started with a billet aluminum Noonan Race Engineering block. These blocks are much more robust than the already stout factory LT4 block, but only weigh a little bit more. The block was stuffed with an all-forged rotating assembly spec’d to handle Jason’s lofty power goals of over 1,500 horsepower on the chassis dyno and then topped with the custom CNC-ported CID heads from his previous LT4 build.

Running down the middle of the block is a custom ground low-lash solid roller camshaft, and Kooks stepped-primary racing headers help expel the exhaust gases as efficiently as possible. The long block is topped off with a Kong Performance ported Magnuson 2650R supercharger and a Nick Williams 112mm throttle body being fed by a Clegg Performance Designs 6-inch race intake with the filter substituted for an eight-inch bell mouth.

This is not just another quarter mile trailer queen and retains a full interior, but Jason has removed some unnecessary parts over the years to bring the race weight down to roughly 3,730 pounds.

A 10-rib belt conversion and Vengeance Racing’s Hyper Idler kit keep the belt glued to the pulleys and help this blower spin over 30,000 RPMs and boost this 427 LT to 1,478 horsepower at the rear wheels. To get a direct-injected LT to make that power needs special fueling the stock parts can’t handle. A Lingenfelter Big-Bore high-pressure fuel pump has been fitted to match the 38-percent larger fuel pump lobe on the camshaft and feeds a set of Fuel Injector Connection injectors that flow 30-percent more than the stock LT4 units. A DI fuel system like this can allow Jason’s ZL1 to push more than 1,000 horsepower to the tires on Ignite Ethanol race fuel, but to get it to almost 1,500 horsepower, a supplemental port injection system was added via Too High PSI Performance’s port injection plates and tuned by Elite Tuned.

GM’s 10-speed automatic debuted in 2017, exclusively for the ZL1 Camaro for that first model year. From the factory, the 10L90 is rated at 663 lb-ft.

While a direct-injected 7.0-liter LT pushing all that power is certainly impressive, the big news here is breaking into the 7s in the quarter-mile while still utilizing the 10L90 transmission. Chevrolet offered the 10-speed transmission as an option in the final generation Camaro ZL1, and it has proven itself to be an impressive performer both on the track and the drag strip. But once you more than double the factory output of 650 horsepower, the general consensus is to swap to the drag strip-proven TH400 or Powerglide. But Jason wanted to push the 10-speed into unknown territory and sent his 10L90 to Pure Drivetrain Solutions for a complete rebuild. Along with their proprietary clutch packs and frictions to hold the extra torque, they also paired it with their race torque converter and billet stator.

The focus on the details from Jason, Vengeance Racing, and Pure Drivetrain Solutions pushed this Camaro into new record-breaking territory for the GM 10L90 with a best of 7.85 at 175mph. And this was no one-pass-fluke; Jason piloted his ZL1 to a total of three seven-second passes in the same night to reach his new personal best. Now that Jason has reached his seven-second pass goal and his 6th generation ZL1 set the 10L90 quarter mile record, we can’t wait to see what’s next!