Don’t believe the doomsayers; Aussie manufacturing is alive and well, as this brand new, all-Aussie billet LS block shows. The brainchild of Toowoomba’s Paramount Performance and Gears Performance Engineering, this 388ci mill proves there is still huge interest in the LS platform.
First published in the June 2026 issue of Street Machine
“We initially wanted to build a billet block to achieve goals we had for our drag-and-drive car,” says Paramount’s Terry Seng. “We reckon we’ve put together the ultimate billet LS block, but it is a team effort with Gears Performance Engineering, who do the CNC machining of these blocks, along with my 30 years’ experience in the performance industry.”
The blocks are a clean-sheet, computer-aided design with over 600 hours of engineering invested, as well as 24 hours of finite element analysis to simulate all load scenarios and verify strength and stiffness. “All design and manufacturing complies with ISO 9001:2012 quality management system standards,” Terry says. “We carefully sourced and tested all materials to ensure grade consistency, so it’s not just a CNC copy of a standard block. Eventually, we’ll be selling them as a completely finished deal, or as a semi-finished set-up, like a Dart block.”
Billet blocks are a common sight in race cars, but as a stalwart drag-and-drive competitor, Terry wanted to push the envelope with a billet performance mill for street cars. “It’s designed to run in a street car, even though it’s a solid, dry block,” he says. “Our standard-deck-height block is designed to be the next step up from a cast-iron block, where the internals can be bolted directly into our block.”
The dressed long motor you see here is the first example, displacing 388ci in a standard 9.240in deck height thanks to a 4.135in bore and a 3.625in-stroke Callies Magnum crank, which swings 6.125in Carrillo steel rods and 9.5:1 JE pistons. A custom Crow Cams solid-roller cam with .680thou lift works the valves in the Brodix BR7-series heads ported by NxtGen Engineering, who also provided the dry sump oil pan.
The team designed the block for street machiners who are already pushing their combos past what factory-style oil pumps can hold, so setting it up for dry sump systems has allowed them to package some neat tricks. “We designed this block with four-piston oil squirters, and with the dry sump, this will provide a lot of cooling, even though the block doesn’t take coolant,” Terry explains.
An Aeroflow 102mm cable throttlebody is mounted to a billet intake manifold from Shaun’s Custom Alloy, while fuel is delivered by eight 2000cc primary injectors, with another eight AFIS 4740cc (600lb/h) secondary injectors as back-up, controlled by a Holley Dominator ECU.
“This engine has made 2170hp on the dyno, and we did seven back-to-back runs at that power level,” says Terry. “It went 4.57 to the eighth-mile on 235s in my son Caleb’s VT Commodore, and has gone 171mph on a 235.”
The Paramount Performance team are about to fit the engine into Terry’s famous HDT275 VC Commodore for street testing, and they’ve also just started machining on their second billet LS block. This new block features a 9.750in deck height, and will go in Terry and Brad Lane’s old Pro Stock car, with the goal of bettering their small-block record.
WATER FEATURE
“You can bolt any heads on these blocks, as they still run water in to cool the head through the water pump port, and it comes back down through a specially designed valley plate,” says Terry. “In the car, we feed it with an electric pump that pushes it through and back to the radiator.”
Paramount Performance
Toowoomba, Queensland
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