Quote:
Originally Posted by Krewton
Ed,
Not wanting to go the supercharger route, as I'm sure my wife will occationally drive.
I found this for sale http://www.svtperformance.com/forums...-1-intake.html
I'm not sure what this gets me from the intake that I have mounted on my egine, which is the 01 Cobra intake and manifold. I don't know if I was being clear or not, but my current setup is off of the 01 Cobra. In researching, it appeared to be the same as the 03 Marauder. That being said, shouldn't what I have work?
Krewton |
Krewton,
What you have is as good as (actually better than) what you saw on SVT for your purposes. The only thing you don't have is the polishing. If that's important to you then get a couple of six packs of beer and a pizza. In a few hours yours will look the same. What you do have that the SVT piece may well not have is good low speed throttle response. Once you start to go after porting, high lift, long duration camshafts and all the usual go fast racing stuff you will have a race engine trapped in a street car. The engine won't be happy and most importantly the driver won't be happy!
You will find a common thread of wisdom here on Club Cobra regarding engine builds. Most experienced street driven Cobra owners look for good bottom end and mid range performance with the engine power peak occurring by or before 6000 rpm. When you put your power peak up much above 6000 rpm you are moving your engine characteristics closer and closer to a high rpm race engine.
The race type engine will be temperamental, more fuel sensitive than you will care for, foul plugs at low rpms and consume gas at a rate you can not even begin to imagine - because it is a race engine. When you drive anywhere except on the highway you will keep it in a lower gear to keep the engine in its "sweet spot" rpm wise. If you don't it will begin to start bucking and farting and in general produce an unhappy driving experience.
When you finally surrender and bring it up into its rpm sweet spot you will discover the end of your side pipe is only 24 inches from your left ear. After trying various types of ear plugs and shooting ear muffs you will finally surrender and rebuild the engine the way you should have done it the first time.
Check out Excalibur (Ernie) on this site and look back at his experiences. Better yet PM him and listen to what he says - it'll save you a lot of time and money. By the way Ernie's first engine was a take no prisoners 427 Tunnel Port with dual quads.
For what its worth, one of the endearing attributes of the supercharged 4.6 is the exceptional street manners it has. They idle at 700 rpm and produce torque and HP like a race engine but do it at all rpms without the usual bad manners the race engine has. They are eminently drivable by wives and do not do crazy things like bucking, farting or overheating the way race engines do. Did I mention they get 25 mpg on 91 octane pump gas that you can get anywhere and still produce 600+ RWHP?
- just a thought ...
Ed
<Begin Edit> I mis-spoke on Ernie's engine it was a high riser not a tunnel port but the drivability issues are unchanged
<End Edit>