With bolt-ons including Stainless Works headers, our 2005 GTO project previously made 375.9 hp and 372.7 lb-ft on SLP's Superflow dyno. Then Stainless Works bolted up its new 3-inch exhaust system at its Chagrin Falls, Ohio headquarters. As an added benefit to the well-designed and great-sounding system, the baseline dyno numbers, 356.1hp/356.5 lb-ft on GMR Speed's Dynojet, went up to 368.1/376.4, a solid gain.
Our time with this 2005 GTO was winding down, and I left Ohio and headed west for Chicago, where this Goat had a heads/cam appointment at Speed Inc. Speed Inc, based in Schaumburg, Illinois, and led by President Tom Izzo, has earned an excellent reputation with LT and LS owners. The key to any performance shop is having all of your bases covered; Speed Inc's staff is highly experienced in all aspects of late-model GM performance: heads/cams, blowers, turbo systems, high-end tuning, race car building-the guys up front know what they're talking about, and the techs out back know what they're doing. Needless to say, our LS2 Goat would be in good hands.
As we'd done a nitrous system and a host of bolt-ons to the 364-inch mill, it was time to give it some serious power. We'd done some forced induction on previous project GTOs, and as car owner Bruce Corcoran was a fan of the big-cam sound from classic Goats, this project would be a bumpy-cammed, high-rpm screamer.
We've had good luck with AFR's 205cc LS1 castings in the past, picking up nearly 40 horses at the wheels on an LS1 with no other changes. As such, after a good conversation with AFR's Tony Mamo regarding the 205s on an LS2, a set of AFR heads was given the nod for this build. I disclosed this head choice to Tom Izzo, who went to work choosing a camshaft to complement the AFR castings. It had to be a drivable stick, as this GTO spends 95 percent of its time on the road. But it also had to make good power over the factory cam. With those parameters in mind, Izzo chose a 234 duration, .598/.576, 114 LSA grind.
A good set of heads and a big cam to match: just the thing to give this big GTO some added grunt! | 
The AFR 205s feeding our LS2 are a clean-sheet approach to LS heads, and these all-new castings are beefed up with features like a .75-inch deck,... | 
...thicker rocker stud bosses, and thick wall runners. Fully CNC'd, they incorporate a 66cc combustion chamber, 2.02 intake/1.60 exhaust valves,... |