"The drain backs' main purpose is to extend the oil returns from the heads farther into the oil pan and prevent oil from getting pulled into the rotating crankshaft," Schropp says. "This prevents power-robbing parasitic drag caused by the excess oil and windage." It's worth power and is a simple modification that anyone can add to his or her modular engine. The oil sloshing around doesn't effect low-rpm engine operations, but at high rpm the problem is quite prevalent. The stock block was honed to 3.552 inches for proper piston-to-wall clearance.
Kellogg built the steel crankshaft to Livernois' specs, and the stroke checks in at the stock 3.543 inches. Manley steel rods are also done to Livernois specs and are even laser-etched with the Livernois logo. When it came time for the pistons, Mahle was tapped, and Livernois uses a proprietary piston design. The standard Livernois/Mahle pistons have a Grafal skirt coating as well as a phosphate piston coating. Heat-barrier and oil-shedding coatings can be added as well. Compression ratio is set at 11:1, which works fine on pump gas when the engine's tuned properly.
The upper half consists of CNC-ported cylinders, custom camshafts, and a stock intake manifold. The stock PI intake isn't the only one that Livernois recommends; the shop has worked a lot with the Logan Motorsports intake. MM&FF tested that unit on a supercharged, stroked Two-Valve combo last year, with stellar results. Schropp reports they've run it on naturally aspirated and forced-induction combinations with great success as well. The camshaft on this engine is a custom piece spec'd out by Livernois. It checks in at 0.550/0.550 with 248 degrees of duration on the intake side and 250 degrees for the exhaust, at 0.050. Lobe separation is listed on the cam card as 111 degrees-an aggressive but not too lumpy of an idle.
A Ford Racing Performance...
A Ford Racing Performance Parts oil pump supplies sufficient oil pressure for this 435hp street beast.
Manley connecting rods are...
Manley connecting rods are Livernois' only choice for its serious crate engines.
The pistons and rods are dropped...
The pistons and rods are dropped into place. A ring compressor is used to slide the piston into the bore.
It takes about a day or so to set up an engine on the dyno, but the guys in the shop were cool and stayed late so we could dyno the engine in the morning. The dyno cell sees a variety of engine combinations, so a FAST XFI engine-management system is employed for all fuel-injection testing. We utilized a set of Kooks headers for this test mostly because they cleared the dyno. Schropp did say that those headers produced better power numbers over some other ones on the market. Our freshly built engine was sucking down 93-octane pump-gas fuel, and Schropp made a few easy pulls to break in the engine and make sure it all checked out nicely.
The tiny 281ci engine pounded out 435 hp and 391 lb-ft of torque. It's quite impressive and more than enough power to push a 3,500-pound Mustang into the 11-second zone-sans power adder. Adding a stroker crankshaft to this combination should be worth even more horsepower. We estimate anywhere from 40-50 more.
We say throw some nitrous on top of the fortified bottom end, then go out and stomp on some unsuspecting Cobras.
A CNC-machine cuts the heads...
A CNC-machine cuts the heads and are always in stock at the shop.
Our test engine utilized a...
Our test engine utilized a Stage 3 set of heads that flow 225 cfm on the intake and 205 cfm on the exhaust. All flow numbers came at 0.600 inch lift.
The intake valves are stainless...
The intake valves are stainless steel and 2 mm larger than stock. That means the intake checks in at 46.5 mm, while the exhaust measures 37 mm. The new combustion chamber is what allowed this engine to pump 11:1 compression and still run on pump gas.