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With enough skill, effort, time, and money anything of the sort can be done... parts can be fabbed from scratch and/or others adapted as needed, etc. But, why... other than having something to brag about? Just buy the Z and be done with it.
All it takes is money and a willingness to put up with things that don't quite work. Your LT1/4/5 PCM is heavily integrated into several other systems, including the digital display, ABS, traction/stability/Performance Traction Management (if equipped), magnetic ride shock controller (if equipped), transmission control module(if equipped), E-Diff (if equipped). Swapping in an engine from a different generation without any thought to integrating those other systems would likely break all of them. No tach, no ABS, no traction control, no magnetic ride control adjustment, and an automatic transmission that may not even shift out of first gear, if into drive at all.
For any application, you will need to either have a custom intake created, run no hood, or have a custom cutout hood created to clear the extremely tall intake. It is unclear, with the wider, taller DOHC heads, if the engine will even fit in the engine bay of a C7. It can likely be made to fit if you are willing to relocate the majority of the underhood items and clearance some of the body.
Assuming, arguendo, that the engine can be made to fit, there are a couple of ways to approach this, dependent on your goals and budget.
You can make a car that looks like a C7 with an LT6 and DCT, but does not function at all like one (aftermarket digital instrument cluster, no Traction/Stability/PTM/ABS, E-Diff). Due to the integration of the diff and the DCT, this could only be done by creating a custom torque tube/driveshaft to relocate the DCT transaxle to the rear of the car and clearance/custom fab the rear tray and cradle for it to fit.
You can try to adapt an LT6 to a manual C7 using an aftermarket engine control unit, whenever one becomes available. Motec currently has one for the C7 that allegedly integrates with the other factory computers like or near stock, but I have never actually seen one in action and cannot speak to how well it actually works, and it is unclear if it is compatible with the LT6. We won't know until Motec actually gets their hands on one. This would require a custom torque tube and clutch to bolt up to the LT6.
All of this is to say that it really would not be worth it unless you happen to have a flood totaled C7, a free LT6, and a willingness to drive a car with none of the C7 tech in it. At that rate, you may be just as well served by starting with a C5.
10-27-2022, 01:10 AM
