The Next Generation of Ford Sportscar Engines

[Tim Northcutt]

Don't get me wrong....the Elan and the Yates are solid engines...and quite competitive...

But they are derived from a Ford 16 valve pushrod engine that is at least 30 years old...it has been a staple in NASCAR, but maybe it is time for a Ford engine from the 21st century to begin its evolution and developemtn on the raod courses of the world

Maybe it is time for someone (Elan as a Panoz subsidiary?) to take a newer generation of Ford production engine and apply it to the sportscar racing world...

Maybe the 4.6L DOHC 32-valve V-8 that is in the Panoz Esparante and the new Mustang Mach 1 street cars? Build up the displacement to
6.0L and do an Elan-based race build?

Or the 5.4L OHC 24-valve (I think that valve count is coorect) V-8 that is in the Lincoln Navigators?

Or even downsize the 6.3 L V-10...

Are there any Jag, Volvo, Aston-Martin or other Ford-related engines that would be better suited to carry the "Ford" name on the valve covers???

Your thoughts????

[JAG]

New Aston V12 or the Jag V8/V6 maybe turbocharged.

[Tim Northcutt]

What are their displacements?

Every time I go to the Jaguar site, the screen is too big and I can't get to the cursor arrows to read the details on the specs...

[JAG]

AM V12 is about 6l, while Jag V8 is 4l and in the XKR is supercharged. Jag/Ford V6 is used in the Noble M12 fitted with twin turbos and about 3.2l.

[Tim Northcutt]

Thanks, JAG...all three sound like good options, depeding on which direction someone would want to go with it....

[paul-collins]

Originally posted by Tim Northcutt
Maybe it is time for someone (Elan as a Panoz subsidiary?) to take a newer generation of Ford production engine and apply it to the sportscar racing world...

Maybe the 4.6L DOHC 32-valve V-8 that is in the Panoz Esparante and the new Mustang Mach 1 street cars? Build up the displacement to
6.0L and do an Elan-based race build?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what the Multimatic and the Panoz Esperante GT-LM are powered by (as built by Yates)?

From Multimatic's site, the engine is listed as Robert Yates Racing built, Ford 5.0L 32 valve modular V8. Sounds to me like they've bored it out from the 4.6...

Strangely, panozauto.com lists the Esperante GTS as having the 5.8L 16-valve "Ford Racing GT-40" motor, which gets less bhp than listed by Multimatic. But that's not the Esperante GT-LM, which has been listed as having the RYR 5.0L... I wonder what the bhp of the car is in LM trim.

[Tim Northcutt]

Maybe that is what Yates did build for the Multimatic?

I was unaware of that...

I know that the Elan is the old pushrod 16-valve engine...

I believe that the Yates engine in the R&S is, too...but I haven't been able to find out specifics on the Yates motor that Matthews is running....

And if it is the engine that the Multimatic is running, I'm wondering if it is possible to get another liter of displacement out of it for a Le Mans Prototype enigne in the LMP1 category...

I'm just not familiar enough with that engine to know...

Thanks, Paul-Collins...

[Tim Northcutt]

BTW...the Ford Racing GT-40 engine on the Esperante GTS has carburetors, and is probably built off of theithr the NASCAR engine or the old 351 Cleveland (same displacement, anyway)

[paul-collins]

Originally posted by Tim Northcutt
if it is the engine that the Multimatic is running, I'm wondering if it is possible to get another liter of displacement out of it for a Le Mans Prototype enigne in the LMP1 category...

I'm no racing engineer, but I read a book by one.

Since the motor started life as 4.6, my guess is that they couldn't bore it / stroke it out much more than to about 5.1L. Seems to me that an engine that could gain 30% displacement without compromising the block would be pretty wasteful...

(I'm talking about Mark Donohue's book, if you're curious)

[Tim Northcutt]

But Ford took the original 218 V-8 clear up to a 302...same basic block...bigger cams, bigger heads, bigger pistons, longer stroke, etc.....

Some may argue with me that the 302 came from the 260, but it was originally a 218 V-8 in the very early 1960s before becoming the same basis for the 289 and later the 302...

REI engineering in Lincolnshire, England builds the 3.5L Rover
V-8 up to a 5.4 L V-8 as well...

I also know that the Buick version of the Rover V-8 (215 cu.in.)in 1964 became the Buick 300 by lengthening the stroke and putting a bigger cam in it...

I can buy the 1964 Buick aluminum heads and cam via the internet and convert my olds version of the 215 V-8 into a 300 in a heartbeat...same bolt patterns and everything....

I know that mark donahue is a legend, and he attended Brown Univ. a prestigious Ivy league school, but there are three examples of commercial applications that blow away his premise....

In each case, it is at least 1.5L of added displacement...

[paul-collins]

To be clear, it wasn't his premise - I just came away with the sense of there being certain limits for blocks, and that typically a reboring of a race block would only gain so much. As I said, I'm not a mech eng. I'm much more polite than that.

Edited to note that your extreme versions all seem to come from blocks that were designed waaaay in the past. Were any of them aluminum blocks? What year is the most recent design (prior to resizing) that we're talking about here?

[Tim Northcutt]

The Rover V-8 and the Buick-Olds V-8 (same engine) are both aluminum...the Buick and Olds versions of that engine were supposedly the first production-built Aluminum V-8s in America...

Rover bought the licensing for that engine from GM in the mid-1960s when America went to "big Blocks" and more capacity in the muscle car era.

Rover used that 3.5 L engine in cars and in Land Rover vehicles until it was phased out of production in the mid-late 1990s...

Over the years Rover upgraded the engine in various ways....

REI Engineering in England still does the performance builds for customers in the UK...I got a ton of information from them a couple of years ago when I entered a design contest to re-create a "retro" model that had long since disapperaed from the auto world as a 2003 car...I revived the Triumph TR Series of roadsters...they would have been road rockets with the engines I planned for them...based on that Rover V-8..

P.S. -- I didn't mean to sound nasty in my reply to you...and I apologize if it read that way...I'm not an engineer, either...

BTW...for all I know about that Ford 4.6L, the valve configurations and many other things designed into that engine might make it impossible to either bore it out or extend the stroke longer than the 5.0 or 5.1L...I'm just not familiar with that engine at all...and supposedly this is the first year they will offer it in a Mustang...

[JAG]

Forgive my ignorance but are there any large US engines that could be considered to be on a par, technologically wise, with say a BMW V8, Jaguar V8 (I know they are owned by Ford), Honda NSX V6,Toyota V8 etc.

For example is the Vette C5 engine an old pushrod type engine.

[Tim Northcutt]

I'm not familiar with the particulars of a lot of the GM engines, epecially the C5...LeeJanotta seems to know a great deal about them...I hope he chimes in on this one....

The American engine that really intrigues me for a possible sportcar application, however, is the Chrysler 5.7L Hemi...a modern version of an old concept they pioneered that were the most powerful production engines of their day...

The new version of it supposedly cranks a lot of horsepower and torque...and I feel confident in saying that it would be on-par performance wise with many engines anywhere in its same class...

However, whether or not the Daimler side of the equation would grant the go-ahead to create an endurance/sportscar racing application of that engien would be another matter...

[Lee Janotta]

You flatter me, Tim.

The 5.4L quad-cam mod motor, in my opinion, is not a great base for a race engine. I don't know if you've ever seen one of these, but the engine's physically huge, on par with the old 429 semi-hemi. That's a lot of weight, even in a lightweight alloy casting. I doubt it'd even fit into most of the current LMP900s.

The 351 Cleveland really hasn't been developed since the early 1970s. It was originally the better performance small-block, with huge valves and a good architecture... But 30 extra years of intense development in sports cars, drag racing, NASCAR and Trans-Am have made the 351 Windsor by far the better of the two blocks for performance applications. That's what all the pushrod Ford engines you find at racetracks these days are based on.

Chevy's traditional smallblock isn't any worse in NASCAR, but it hasn't been developed nearly as much as the Ford for road racing (not since Chevy pulled their factory support in Trans-Am in the early '90s).

The LT5 that Lotus designed was good for it's time, but no one ever bothered to develop it for racing.

The Gen III block shares nothing of consequence with the old engines. It has loads of potential, and I'd love to see what Hendrick or Pratt & Miller could do to develop a 6-liter version of the engine for the 900s/GTPs. It's a pushrod design, yes, but it's probably the best engineered pushrod engine ever.

The new small-block Hemi from Chrysler should be a hell of a motor... But Mercedes would never lend any sort of support to such an effort, so it's not a financially viable proposition.

I'd say Ford's best sportscar engine right now would be the 6.0L Aston-Martin V-12. On a related note, I've been prodding people on the CART board on the idea of a turbocharged 3.5L stock-block formula. I'm sure it'll never be adopted, but part of the idea was that the vast majority of the parts developed for such a CART program could be used in a motor for LeMans.

[Tim Northcutt]

Thanks Lee...I knew you'd see this at some point and add yout thoughts!

I didn't realize that the Windsor was the basis of the Ford V-8s...learn something new every day...

Question and a request:

What do you know about the 4.6L Ford V-8 and the possibilities of increasing the displacement, and...

If you would, cover as much as you can about the C5 and the C6 from Chevy...someone asked about that specifically...

[Lee Janotta]

Well, the best way to increase the size of the 4.6L mod motor is to swap it out for it's 5.4L cousin from the trucks. Heads are the same, architecture's the same, but the block's bigger. The biggest I've heard of anyone punching out the 4.6L version is only by about +130cc.

Here's some recommend reading on the Gen III Chevy small-block:
http://www.c5registry.com/Documents/ls6/page2.htm
http://www.chevyhiperformance.com/techarticles/95098/
http://www.mortec.com/borstrok.htm

Now, as for the engine in the C6 Corvette, there has been much talk in Detroit of a pushrod engine using _two_ cams inside the block. There's not a whole lot of evidence available at this time to say one way or another. But, my line of thinking goes like this: We're in a recession. They've got a block that's only seen seven model years so far, and is making a whopping 405 horsepower off the showroom floor in the Z06-model Corvette. The old small-block went for 41 years without any radical changes. Yes, the Gen II smallblock (LT-1 and LT-4) only lasted 7 years... But it was not that great a design, not even remotely as groundbreaking as the Gen III. And this engine, unlike the Gen II, has GTS-class wins at LeMans, Daytona and Sebring to it's credit. And, they've put the Gen III engine in the trucks, allowing greater economies of scale to be realized. Something they never did with the Gen II engines.

I don't think there's any reason for GM to reinvent the wheel at this point.

[pirenzo]

This is an interesting discussion. I have to say my first port of call on this matter would be the AM 6.0l V12
I've often wondered whether todays cars would be disadvantaged by a physically long engine like a V12, due to the fact that these days it seems, it's better to comprimise the engine for the sake of the aero, than vice versa. Now that wheel bases are increased, there should be less of a problem fitting a 12 into the car, without any major comprimises.

[weeks]

What about the 2.3L Zetec found in the Focus? I read an article in Hot Rod magazine where ford increased displacement to 2.5L and did some other stuff to it and now it makes 300hp and 240.2lb-ft of torqe. It was developed for use in off-road racing untill the program was nixed. Which means the thing probably has pretty good reliability. Its expected to make an *easy* 500hp when turbocharged. Plus its small and light and thats always a good thing. Would make a good LMP-2 engine.

[pirenzo]

Max 2l turbo tho.

I don't know whether this is true, but i read somewhere a long time ago that V12's tend to lack low end torque. I was thinking last nite, that since there is no point in having ever more powerful engines, as they are limited to arount 600bhp, but you have to exploit it's other qualities. From a sportscar engine, you're looking for more torque, more fuel efficiency, smaller packaging, lighter wieght.... So i pose the question, if the Yates/Elan Ford engine's can already produce the necessary power, are 8 cyl, so more easily packaged, have loadsa torque, and enough fuel economy, why replace them?

[pirenzo]

Another thought i had was that since you are restricted to 600hp, the engine is no longer all for going down the straights anymore. Since you can't ever have more power than that, all your top end speed is going to come from the aero (how slippery the car is), the focus of development on the engine becomes how usable it is in the corners, how hard you can accelerate out of corners, how much engine braking you can get, how usuable the engine is mid corner, poarticularly some of the faster corners like the Porsche Curves and the Esses. It seems V8's are the way to go here. We've seen a gradual progression in the past few years towards V8's, especially as now, designers are no longer solely catering for LM, but for some of the twistier US tracks too, like Mid-O, Road Atlanta, Sears Point, Sebring... Look at this years cars. the top 5 cars were V8's... And V8's have won LM, and the ALMS for the past 4 yrs now. It seems to me, that the best comprimise for sportscars these days is the Turbo V8, found in the Audi, Bentley. So Fords options to me are to continue development of the 6.0l V8 pushrod, or taking the 4.6 and taking it down to 4.0l, and sticking a couple of turbo's on it

[Tim Northcutt]

Interesting thoughts, Pirenzo....

Based on everyone's input from above, this is what I probably would do:

The V-12 sounds interesting (I don't know enough about them to know about the torque at the low end) but other threads have discussed Aston Martin coming to LM under their own name, which would probably nix a "Ford" badge on that engine...but I do like the idea of playing with the V-12...

Since the thread is looking at a new generation of Ford engine, on the V-8 normally-aspirated front, I like the 5.4L 32-valve DOHC "cousin" to the 4.6L engine that is run in the Panoz and Mustang Mach 1 street cars, with Yates as the builder, and having the bigger block to bump up the displacement to 6.0L....

If I went Turbo V-8 on the Ford front, think about this....

Cosworth built a 3.5L normally-aspirated 3.5L engine to IRL specs that will most likely be pressed into service in the IRL this season badged as a Chevy engine (see the IRL forum for the details as to why)....

Speedway Engines will do the preps and builds on that motor....

I would take that engine badged as a "Ford" and have Speedway engines do the Turbo application to it....

Speedway Engines is one of the most prominent and successful engine builders in Champ Car circles...they built turbos before the IRL-CART split....

They are known for building speed with reliability, and they would be my first choice if I went that route...

Otherwise on the Turbo front, I REALLY like Lee's idea of the 3.5L stock-block turbo....especially since getting your hands on an Audi turbo is about as likely as getting struck by lightning...

[gttouring]

we know about th esuffering a sports cra engine would recieve in hot temps being supercharged but the new GT 5.4 litre V8's is supercharged at 500hp/500ft.lbs of torque
I would wager this DOHC engine is going to be the new work horse

[gttouring]

and It is EFI, so that should relax some worriers about FORD ponying up the good stuff and not leaving it all in the mustang, heh heh get it pony-mustang heh heh
I slay me

[Tim Northcutt]

Question for gttouring:

That 5.4L GT engine...

How many valves? Is it DOHC? or is it more of the old pushrod design 16-valve variety that has been worked for many years???

Any details you have would be most appreciated...