that looks like a turbocharger in the battery box location?
anything is possible with a turbo. Literally.
The formula one's, for that brief, scary period (in the 80's) when they allowed turbo'd 1.5 litres or 'naturally aspirated' 3 litre
engines, went virtually 100% to turbos. For that 3 or 4 yrs (If forget) they were getting up to 1250 or 1300 hp out of
1500 cc's in QUALIFYING trim - so they risked their engines on ultra high boost in exchange for grid position; but.......
1250 hp out of 1500 cc's?
?
That is approaching ONE horsepower per cubic CENTIMETRE!?!?!?!?!?
MOST engine builders have a 'ULTIMATE' goal of one horsepower per ONE cubic
inchand one cubic inch equals
16.387 CC's so they were approaching (let's say) FIFTEEN TIMES that performance
goal....... makes you kind of humble to think you are doing well to get 350 hp out of a 350 small block (and
IS, in fact,
you WOULD be doing well......
)
At that rate, from a nice 3.4 litre dohc V6 (LOL; everyone roll their eyes now) they would be getting 2833 horsepower, but
on a short term basis. For the rest of their race they would drop it down to ONLY about 900 hp or a mere 0.6 hp per cc....
which would translate a tuner's goal (yeah, for a 3.4 twincam) to ONLY 2,040 hp........ gee golly I should be able to do THAT,
shouldn't I?
of course they have just a bit more funding and likely more manpower available to them..... I"m guessing here.......
titanium EVERYthing and complete engine teardown and check (did the rods stretch?) after EVERY race. That would be
neat tho.
Talk about a different way of life........
All very very super cool stuff tho.
and YES the super duty did VERY well; my understanding is that when they did factory backed racing that fieros did 1-2-3 in
their class. It would be pretty interesting to have a tech session that went over one of the racing setups.....
they went hard and they FINISHED which is a major accomplishment and goal of every racing team.
NEAT-O pic.
And NO INTERCOOLER. Interesting. That means boost levels must have been not all that high......