LAST week we saw Harrop and Dandy Engines make just over 800hp from a stock Ford 7.3-litre Godzilla V8. That figure was obtained with one of Harrop’s 2650i inverted TVS blowers pushing 12psi into the mill, running pump 98 RON fuel. But Harrop’s Heath Moore and Dandy’s Frank Marchese knew there was plenty more power hiding inside Ford’s new iron-block, medium-duty truck motor.
That’s why they came back to Dandy’s engine dyno earlier this week with plenty of E85 boost juice, with an eye to cramming more air into the big-inch small-block.
“We changed over to E85 and crept the boost up to 18psi over 30 dyno runs, to make 944hp with the 87mm throttle,” says Heath. “But we saw vacuum behind the throttle blade, so we adapted a 102mm throttle that Dandy had there, and it picked up around another 40hp seeing 19psi. Then we leaned on it a bit harder and pushed it past four digits to see 1015hp on 20psi.
“The head gaskets and head bolts must be something special from the factory, and the cam did well, too! There would be over 60 runs on this engine, and I thought we’d lift a head, pick a ring or throw a rod, but instead of the next stage of development being fixing this motor with upgrades, we’ll move to upgrading the valvetrain for boost.”
Despite having already upped the throttle size twice from the stock 80mm unit, Heath reckons there’s more potential in the Godzilla platform with a bigger-still throttle unit.
“We’ll be working on a specific large-diameter Harrop solution to maximise the blower potential,” he says. “Working closely with Dandy Engines, we also have some development cams on the way from the USA to test, and we’re assessing a dedicated belt drive that can accommodate a wider belt for the serious-effort engine packages, as this motor is still using the factory six-rib belt set-up.”
We’ll be sure to keep you updated on how much more grunt the team manage to extract from their Godzilla going forward.
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