They Were BORED with LS’s! – NEW World Record!

Doug Cook and the team at Motion Raceworks skipped the well-worn LS platform for something almost nobody had real data on: GM’s Gen V LT4. With virtually no seat time on the new combination, they walked straight into Hot Rod’s Drag Week 2017 chasing a record, and immediately ran into wiring harness gremlins that nearly derailed the entire attempt. See how a team with no playbook turned a fresh, largely undocumented engine build into record-setting territory.

Chasing a record on a platform everyone already understands is one kind of challenge. Chasing it on an engine combination almost nobody has real-world data for is another thing entirely. Doug Cook and the team at Motion Raceworks picked the harder option, walking into Hot Rod’s Drag Week with virtually no seat time on their new build and a title card that practically dares LS loyalists to keep reading. What follows is less a triumphant record run and more an honest account of exactly how many things can go wrong on a fresh engine build before a record-setting pass actually happens.

Why Everyone Was ‘Bored’ With the LS

Motion Raceworks built its reputation on LS-platform engines, which makes the framing of this build, captioned as the team getting “bored” with the LS, a deliberate departure rather than a random experiment. Rather than chase yet another record on the most thoroughly documented engine platform in modern performance history, Doug Cook and his team chose to build around GM’s Gen V LT4, a supercharged small-block with a fraction of the aftermarket data and proven combinations that the LS platform has accumulated over two decades.

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Choosing the Gen V LT4 Instead

The Gen V LT4 debuted as GM’s factory-supercharged flagship small-block, powering cars like the Corvette Z06 and Camaro ZL1 with a direct-injection, high-compression design that differs meaningfully from the LS engines that came before it. Building a serious drag-race combination around the LT4 meant Motion Raceworks couldn’t lean on the mountain of tuning data, proven parts combinations, and forum knowledge that the LS platform had built up, they were, in a real sense, writing the LT4’s competition playbook from scratch.

No Seat Time, No Real-World Data

According to 1320video’s description, the team went into Hot Rod’s Drag Week 2017 with “virtually no seat time and no real world data” on the new combination, an unusually candid admission for a build attempting a record. That’s a meaningfully different starting position than most record attempts, which typically arrive at an event after extensive private testing, this build’s real shakedown happened in front of an audience, during the event itself, rather than behind closed doors beforehand.

The Wiring Harness Gremlins That Almost Ended the Run

The build’s early days at Drag Week were consumed by exactly the kind of problem that plagues fresh engine combinations: persistent electrical gremlins traced back to the GM wiring harness, which cost the team crucial data-gathering time in the event’s opening days. Only after pulling the factory harness and resolving the wiring issue could Motion Raceworks get back to tuning and gathering the real-world numbers the build actually needed to chase its record safely.

What Drag Week Actually Demands From a Build

Hot Rod’s Drag Week format requires competitors to drive their car under its own power between drag strips across multiple states over the course of a week, meaning a car has to survive both quarter-mile passes and real highway miles, a demand that ruthlessly exposes any fresh build’s weak points. Losing days to a wiring harness issue on a car that still has to be driven hundreds of miles between events adds real pressure that a pure track-only record attempt would never face.

A Record Attempt as a Proof of Concept

Beyond the record itself, this build functioned as a public proof of concept for the Gen V LT4 as a legitimate high-performance platform, distinct from the LS engines that dominate the drag racing and street performance scenes. Every problem the team solved along the way, from wiring gremlins to tuning an engine combination with no prior playbook, effectively became a documented reference for the next builder considering the same swap, in an era when most LT4 knowledge still lived exclusively inside GM’s own engineering department.

Why This Run Matters Beyond the Record Itself

Records set on well-trodden platforms tend to get broken again within a season or two, but records set on genuinely new combinations carry a different kind of significance, they mark the first real data point for an engine platform that would otherwise remain a factory-only curiosity in the performance world. Whatever number Motion Raceworks ultimately put on the board, the more lasting contribution of this run was proving the Gen V LT4 could be pushed into record territory at all, gremlins and all.

How One Build Shaped a Shop’s Reputation

Motion Raceworks has continued building its name around exactly this kind of platform experimentation in the years since, applying lessons learned from early Gen V LT4 projects like this one to later builds chasing records on an even wider range of GM engine families. Watching an early example of that philosophy in action, gremlins, wiring harness failures, and all, gives viewers a rare look at the unglamorous groundwork that eventually turns into a shop’s signature expertise on a given platform.

Why Drag Week Specifically Rewards This Kind of Risk

Drag Week’s format has also become something of an informal proving ground for exactly the kind of platform experimentation this build represents, since a car that survives a full week of quarter-mile passes and interstate miles on an unproven combination earns a credibility that a single, controlled track pass never fully replicates. That reputation-building effect is part of why teams like Motion Raceworks continue returning to the event year after year, even when, as this build shows, the first attempt on a new combination comes with real risk of an embarrassing early exit. Footage like this also tends to circulate for years after the event itself wraps, since drag racing audiences return repeatedly to early record-chasing runs on since-popularized platforms specifically to see how rough the first real-world attempt actually looked before the combination became a proven, repeatable formula. Watching that process play out on video, wiring gremlins included, gives viewers a far more honest picture of what platform experimentation actually looks like than any polished reveal video ever could, and that honesty is exactly why footage like this keeps getting referenced by builders tackling similar swaps years later.

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