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We recently caught some racing action at US 41 Drag Strip during the 2022 Summit Midwest Drags, and it was there in Morocco, IN that we got to speak with Jamie Doller of Lowdoller Motorsports, an automotive shop his brother Brandon owns. Jamie was at the drag-and-drive event competing with his 1971 Camaro equipped with a turbocharged 4.8L LS engine he had rescued from a junkyard years ago. Impressed by the Camaro, we got the full scoop from Jamie about his streetcar set up.
“Basically, it’s a stock bottom end 4.8L LS,” Doller told us. “It came from a junkyard five years ago. We had picked it up when we bought the car, but we didn’t really know what we set out to build or what we were going to do with the car. Honestly, I think we were just going to try to build something to drive around town in. As you can see, it kind of morphed into this streetcar over the last five years.”
As for how Jamie got the ’71 Camaro, that was a bit of an accident. He was originally trying to get a ’69 Camaro and had to call an audible.
“The car is something my brother Brandon and I picked up,” Doller says. “We started out by thinking we were going to pick up a ‘69 Camaro in Northern Ohio. We told the guy that we were on our way with the money, and when we got an hour and a half away, the guy said it was sold. We just got online and found this ‘71 Camaro in Buffalo, so we just kept on driving to pick it up and bring it home. In about two months, we built this whole car. Today, it’s a legit streetcar – I’ve even driven it in the winter when my truck was down for a bit. It does everything.”
Jamie told us that there hasn’t been too much done to the engine aside from making sure everything inside was up to snuff. When he bought the engine five years ago, he did opt for a new Brian Tooley Racing camshaft and valvetrain for it and a turbocharger.
“We dropped it in the car like that and put the turbo and everything else on,” he says. “The engine hasn’t been out of the engine bay in five years. It has thousands of street miles. It owes me nothing. The turbo is a billet S480, which helps this 4.8L LS make around 900 horsepower. Out on the track, the car has been a best 9.00 in the quarter mile. For the Midwest Drags, we’re shooting for low-9s. We’d like to go faster, but I don’t think it’s got much more in it.”
Jamie and his Camaro, which sports a nice orange paint color and a fun license plate that says, ‘More PSI,’ ran in the Street Race Small Block Power Adder class at the Midwest Drags, which has an 8.50 cap limited by cage certification. Jamie managed to have a solid drag-and-drive week with times between 9.313 at 148 mph and a best 8.961 at 152 mph, which gave Jamie a new PR for fastest ET and a fourth-place finish in his class.
Engine of the Week is sponsored by PennGrade Motor Oil, Elring – Das Original and Engine & Performance Warehouse Inc./NPW Companies. If you have an engine you’d like to highlight in this series, please email Engine Builder Editor Greg Jones at [email protected].
