Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
Obviously you've never ridden in an old DZ302 Z28. And with a carburetor and distributor, no less. Easy 400 rwhp as delivered with a sharp tune. My own little stroker small block, while displacing almost 7 liters makes well over 550 hp and is as docile as a kitten, pulling 6th gear at 1000 rpm without a buck or a shudder.
Seriously, while the new 5.0 finally has brought some credibility back to the nickname, it's far from the pinnacle of engine development. A very complex design with yards of cam chains may not be a recipe for long term reliability. High specific output car engines in my experience tend to live short lives compared to lower stressed designs. The 5.0 is too new to tell yet.
I'm certain you could de-stroke a Z06 motor down to 5 liters, that should yield about 360 hp, a bit of a tune, you could easily have equal power output. I am not a fan of complexity for complexity's sake, have you ever seen the leakdown specs on 4 valve engines?
Plenty of guys with M62 and S62's with lots of miles on them, and that's a 13 year old engine design.
And the Modulars in general are probably the longest lasting engine on the road, that is despite the "million feet" of timing chains.
And the DZ302 did not make 400HP (NET) stock (right down the manifolds).
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What all of these various pieces added up to was a healthy small block rated very conservatively at 290 horsepower at 5800 rpm and 290 ft. lbs. of torque at 4200 rpm. Rumor has it, however, that the same engine produced 350 horsepower at 7000 rpm on the dynamometer! Why would Chevy underrate the engine? Certainly insurance reasons come to mind, along with the desire to understate what the engine was capable of lest the various racing sanctioning bodies penalize the teams that chose to run the Z/28 in competition.
It would make it with some work (just like similarly flowing heads will do the same on an SBF) there is nothing magical to the formula of making high HP out of relatively small displacement. It is making it driveable, not "peaky" and still managing good fuel economy and manners that are the hard parts.
The S62, which is ~5.0L as well came out in 1999 and did exactly that. Good fuel economy, BIG flat torque curve thanks the VANOS, and 400HP. Not to mention a 190Mph top speed, something that old Camaro couldn't do, and if through upgraded power output and some gear swaps you got it there, it wouldn't be anywhere in the neighbourhood of safe by modern standards.
Ford has also been making the Modular for 21 years now. It is FAR from a new engine design, and the 32V version of the 4.6L have been around almost as long with no durability issues to speak of, in spite of all that timing chain
And the 5.0L moniker had (and continues to have) plenty of credibility. That's why they brought it back, that's why the fox is probably the most popular drag racing platform of all time. That car is the reason the NMRA likely exists. And I believe the Mustang is also the only car to have its own drag racing league.
Regardless of all the talk of engines with the same displacement making that kind of power (and as you know Steve, I'm working on one right now in that black '87 GT that was formerly a carb'd setup in the '85 and made that kind of power there as well), the thing about the "modular" 5.0L is that it doesn't give up bottom-end, fuel economy or driveability in making that kind of power.
And that is often the sacrifice others make.
Would a destroked LS7 cammed to make 440-ish HP retain the driveability and low-end manners its 7.0L sibling has? Of course not. It doesn't have two entire sets of cams that can be advanced and retarded to move the power band around. That is part of the significance of the DOHC setup with the variable cam timing, you have the ability to move the power curve around on the fly, something we can't do with our old distributor wearing pushrod motors