My wife and I just returned from an 8000 mile trip around the U.S. in our '07 Z and early last month we drove a few hundred extra miles for a tour of the LS7 engine plant. Thanks to a lot of effort on the part of Barry Dennis who so kindly fit us in on a personalized tour, we spent about three full hours seeing what goes on in this plant. It far exceeded my expectations, and I would highly recommend a similar tour for any Z06 owner. Anyone who is halfway familiar with engine building will be extremely impressed with this state of the art build center.
A few months ago another "notorious" forum member was poo-pooing the LS7, implying that it wasn't really a "hand built" engine and no different from any other production engine. But anyone touring the PBC will see the obvious detailed work, checking, and testing that goes into building the LS7. When our engines leave that plant, we can expect a VERY high quality product.
Our tour guide was Bob Vernier, who was gracious and knowledgable and spent about three hours patiently answering the hundreds of questions I had for him. We also met Tim Schag, the Plant Manager, who was equally gracious, and many of the other engine builders we have read about on this forum. (Here's a link to the PBC poster with most of the builders:
http://www.kawal.net/poster.htm) I promised Tim not to say anything about the new LS9 engines that recently went through the build line.
Some of the more interesting things I saw was the testing procedures during and after assembly of the LS7s. The leak down test brings out any problems and I was a bit surprised at the number of engines in the "repair" bay. If any little thing is out of the ordinary, the engine ends up in this section, where the problem is solved to insure the engine is perfect before it leaves the PBC. Also interesting was the balancing procedure where the engine is first fired up on natural gas and spun to around 1500 rpm and checked for balance within specifications. The clutch and pressure plate are bolted on at this point and small weights are added to the harmonic balancer and/or flywheel to get the balance within tolerance. A few engines are "freebies", requiring no weights at all. Some may be out of tolerance to require replacing the flywheel with another before balancing.
I also found it interesting that Z06 production is so successful that the LS7s are keeping the plant busy, but Cadillac sales are poor so the LC3 supercharged Northstars, even though an excellent engine, are being built in very small quantities. The two LS7 lines are full, but the Cad lines were empty on our tour day. Some of the builders build both engines and the four cam Cad engines are a bit more fun to build, says Bruce Elam, who builds both.
I was very pleasantly surprised at the personal treatment we received. Every question was answered in detail. At the end, Tim said if I ever had any problems whatsoever, I should immediately contact him and get the problem resolved.
On the tour day, a group of Harvard Business School people was previously touring, so they had on display not only a new Jetstream Blue Z06, but also a Black Cadillac XLRV and a nice looking metallic gray Cadillac STSV. Plus we got to drive a brand new 6 liter Hybrid GMC Yukon that will be announced soon.
A couple of days after the PBC tour, we drove to Bowling Green for a tour of the Corvette Assembly Plant. We had been on this tour before, and it's fun too, but nothing will compare to the PBC tour we had. Every Z06 owner should try to see this plant. A great day! And again, many thanks to Barry, Bob, Tim, and the other engine builders for their time they took with us. It's like a big family there, building us an excellent product.
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