By Matthew Nelson
Ford has really done it this time. It has been sixteen model years since a 5.0L has graced the engine bay of America’s favorite pony car, but make no mistake about it, this is not your daddy’s old 302! In what might be the absolute worst kept secret in recent memory, our beloved Blue Oval has finally unleashed the beast, which will power the 2011 Mustang GT. Can we say, 412 horsepower, 390 pound-feet of torque, and a 7,000 RPM redline? Those types of numbers would generally be reserved for Ford SVT’s flagship models, not the GT!
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It took a mere two years from the time Derrick Kuzak, Ford’s Vice President of Global Product Development gave the order to produce the new engine, for Engine Programs Manager, Mike Harrison and his team to make it happen. Their objective was clear, produce an engine that delivers 400 plus horsepower. The result is nothing short of beautiful, but the technology and the combination of parts inside this new engine are where the real amazement begins.
Although it may share the same bore spacing, as the previous Modular engine, the similarities end there. Consisting of an all aluminum engine block and 4 valve cylinder heads, the new engine tips the scales at 430 pounds, or roughly the same as the mod-motor it is replacing and 20% lighter than the last 5.0L engine. It does so with additional valvetrain hardware, featuring double overhead camshafts with variable cam timing, using a cam-torque-actuated variable timing system (Ti-VCT), which uses the torque placed upon the camshaft’s lobes and pressurized oil, to make adjustments faster and more efficiently, at all engine speeds than previous systems.
The bottom end contains even more goodies, with a forged steel crankshaft, forged connecting rods, and hypereutectic pistons for tighter cylinder clearances and greater power. It also contains cross bolted nodular iron main caps and oil jets which spray the undersides of the pistons for increased cooling. The cylinder head bolt thickness was also increased to 12mm, to handle the increased cylinder pressures, from the 11.0:1 compression ratio. Performance minded customers will find solace in knowing they will likely never starve the engine of oil, thanks to a high capacity, heavily baffled oil pan, which is aided by the new block’s design which increases oil drainback.
So what kind of economy can we expect from this new engine? How does an estimated 25 MPG highway, 17 MPG city from the six-speed automatic models and 24/16 MPG respectively from the six-speed manual equipped models sound? I say, “where do I sign again?”
If the old pushrod based engine is still used as a measure of one's performance, where does the new engine fall? I'd bet my front seat in Hell that people won't mean this engine, when they say they beat a 5.0...
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