Ford Says New 7.3-liter F150 Pickup Motor Fits in Mustang
Lighter variation of the Super Duty could bring about the return of the legendary big-block pony.
The Ford Super Duty refresh for the 2020 model year was introduced at the 2019 Chicago Auto Show and the biggest news pertaining to the new F-250 and F-350 is the debut of an all-new 7.3-liter gasoline V8 engine. Unlike all of the Motor Company’s recent V8 engines, this massive mill uses a pushrod design rather than an overhead camshaft design, but Ford promises that it will be the most powerful gasoline engine in the segment.
While speaking with Ford spokesperson Mike Levine, Motor Authority learned that this new 7.3-liter V8 would fit in the current F-150 and, most importantly, it would also fit in the engine bay of the current Mustang.
The Big Block Mustang
Before going any further, we should point out that this new engine is not a “big block” by the definition applied to cars from the 1960s and 1970s, but in terms of its size and valvetrain design, it is the closest thing to a big block that we have seen in many moons. In fact, if the 7.3-liter Super Duty engine comes to the Mustang in some form, it will be the biggest engine ever offered in the legendary pony car. The 429 Cobra Jet measured 7.0 liters, making it the biggest factory engine ever offered in the Mustang, back in 1971.
Recently, the largest engine that Ford has used with the supercharged 5.8-liter mill in the 2014 Shelby GT500, with the other modern V8 engines measuring 4.6-, 5.0- and 5.4-liters.
7.3-Liter Power
The Motor Company hasn’t announced any power numbers, but we can expect that it will offer a fair deal more power than the base-level 6.2-liter V8 and the automaker expects that it will be the strongest engine in the segment. The Ford 6.2 offers 385 horsepower and 430 lb-ft of torque and the most powerful gas engine in the segment, the Ram 6.4-liter Hemi, offers 410 horsepower and 429 lb-ft of torque. With that in mind, the 7.3-liter V8 will likely offer at least 425 horsepower and 450 lb-ft of torque, but if the new engine is similarly efficient to the 6.2-liter mill, it could pack roughly 455 horsepower and 510 lb-ft torque.
In the past, Ford has used similar gasoline engines in the F-150 and the Super Duty lineup, previously offering the 6.2-liter in the F-150 Raptor along with the F-250 and the F-350, but the half-ton truck had a different tune with more power on the top end while the work trucks are tuned to make their power down low. The same is true of the 5.0-liter engine that is shared by the Mustang GT and the F-150, with the pony car offering big power at high RPM while the truck has more low-end grunt and less top-end pull.
With this in mind, if Ford is to make an F-150 variant of the 7.3-liter V8 Super Duty engine, it would likely offer more horsepower and slightly more torque than the F-250 and F-350 version. When that engine was once again altered for use in the Mustang, we can expect a big jump in horsepower and a drop in torque. As a result, a 7.3-liter Super Duty engine with 455 horsepower and 510 lb-ft of torque could climb to 500 horsepower and 515 lb-ft of torque in the F-150 and when that engine was re-tuned for the pony car, numbers could climb into the range of 550 horsepower while torque would dip down around 500 lb-ft.
Changes are Needed
While the idea of a pushrod V8 measuring 7.3-liters with 550 horsepower and 500 lb-ft of torque sounds nice, there is one key problem. The new Super Duty engine has an iron block, meaning that it would be way too heavy for the Mustang. Not only would it add a ton of weight, it would put that weight over the front end, offsetting the delicate weight balance of the S550 chassis and leading to a car that would handle poorly.
However, if Ford designed a lighter block, perhaps one made from aluminum which could be shared with the F-150, it would make for an interesting “big block” package for the modern Ford Mustang.
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