Hi Les,
I agree with you.
Fords biggest selling vehicle is a F150 truck. Not surprising then that the triton V8 is biased towards this car. IE It has a very long stroke for torque and a truck is big that who cares how big it is. It's also a modular design, sharing components with 3.5ltr V6's, 4.6 & 5.4 V8s and 6.8ltr V10's so the truck bias flows through all of them.
Not so good for cars though.
My daily driver is a BF with the SOHC 5.4 (230kw and 500nm) and ZF 6 speed auto and its an awesome combo IMO. The big difference is the bottom end of these motors compaired to the quad cammers; there's lots of it. The motor has variable cam timing and it's very smooth. It's basically a truck engine as was the windsor V8. Pulls like a train all the way to the limiter which is unfortunately set at 5500rpm.
But, I think and (agree with you Les) that I think Ford has misread the market and been a bit too smart with the Triton as it deviates away from the KISS principal that works so well with OHV designs.
It's also annoying that GM has found it quite easy to keep improving their small block while Ford threw away theirs.
Ford has also misread the market in that people who buy V8's aren't as concerned about fuel prices as those who don't. Performance matters more. GM understand this better which is reflected in their marketing and their priorities in their engineering. HP matters.
Cheers
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Originally Posted by Rebel1
Nope Al, actually I have been disappointed with ford for a long time. Keep in mind that every car I have owned has been a ford with the exception of the last being the magna.
I believe the difficulties ford currently face with falling sales has more to do with the decisions made by ford to walk away from their older small block engines. Holden are enjoying increased sales of their commodore. The GM organization decided wisely that their small block engines were well liked, indeed loved by many, and decided to develop a whole family of updated engines around that basic design.
Ford elected to develop a whole new ( read more expensive to manufacture) engine which had no lineage at all. Huge great big hulking things that were expensive to modify and much more difficult to fit into tight platforms. If you want to put a cam in one you had to buy at least two cams, in many cases four .
We are also in a time when being green and alternate fuels are an area of concern to consumers. Ford has done little by comparison to other manufacturers in this area. Other manufacturers (ok, read chev in this instance, but also others) not being faced with the expense of a whole new engine design, could concentrate outgoings on these "other" areas of concern to address consumer concerns.
Engine manufacturing plants, in these days, need a much larger market than their home market. They need an international market which demand a smaller more efficient engine which can run on a variety of fuels, and fit smaller, less flexible platforms.
Sadly ford misread market forces some years ago.
Sheezzz.....that'll teach ya to get me going on a friday.  |