JETSOLVER

Several things here. If in say, 1994, when the planning for the Mod engine series was done, you had told me that people in North America woud not only sit still for 2 buck a gallon gas,and 65$ a brl. oil but also demand a half dozen or so new cars with FIVE HUNDRED HORSEPOWER under the hundred grand price limit, I would have called a loud and enforcable BullShennanigans.

The fact that the Mod was planned in V10 and even a theoretical V12 as well as V6 and even a couple of fours is proof that displacement was not the issue. It was packaging the project in every single damm product that Ford makes that was the critical path on the program. And the bore dimmension was the big trade off. The fact that thin wall/liner 5.0 liter 4 valve NA motors make well over 500 horses(in endurance racing trim yes, but 400+ with emissions is a given) establishes that.

The bigger flaw in Fords thinking was the trucks. The Mustangs engine is a truck engine, no if, ands, or buts. And as long as trucks are the prefered means of personal urban commuting, that is a perfect fit. However, the recent shift in fuel price and truck sales means that a bigger percentage of a smaller pie is going to be actual working trucks, and there, GM(and DCX) and its large displacement Cam in Block units have a decided advantage. Torque speaks volumes, and Mods do their best work at high revs. Which to me means that Ford may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater again, in that any new platforms may have to take into account a much larger and thus heavier engine bay/crash structure for the boss series WHETHER OR NOT THEY NEED IT AS IT WILL BE THE ONLY CHOICE!

Even more annoying is the fact that they have missed another boat. V10 touched on it briefly with his example of the O.D. available in GM products. Ford has not taken advantage of transmission technology in so long its painful. The recent announcement of dual clutchs in some future Volvo's is a start, but there are now 8 speed auto's and a dozen manumatics with small light weight cases on the market. The rush to displacement is, in part, I suspect a panacea for the lack of forward thinking in this area.

The TR6060 is a heavy duty old school solution to a high torque 6 speed and the number of high torque FWD tranny's can be counted on one hand. Hands up for a Ford auto that could handle 500+ lbs of torque? Hence the AWD solution to try and mitigate it somewhat. If we are going to see these big numbers from all these engine families for the future, I sure hope there has been at least equivalant thought paid to the other part of the powertrain.

I am not convinced, as two joint projects and at least one native one have not paid dividends yet.

V10

Yes there have been many advances in cylinder head / combustion chamber design, but Ford throws all those advances away by running rich A/F ratios to keep the insides of their engines from melting down. Ford has a lot of work to do on fuel mileage.


The bore spacing (and hence bore diameter) on the Mod motors was determined by the requirement that the V8 Mod motor fit sideways into the Lincoln Continental engine bay and not for emissions requirements. A very costly design blunder by Ford.

jsaylor

I am aware of the packaging issues Ford's plan to employ the Mod motor architecture in fwd vehicles caused. The truly unfortunate part of that equation is that the majority of those vehicles were cancelled, with only the Lincoln Continental you mention making it to production, a reality which made those packaging concessions pointless.

As for the bore being strictly a packaging consideration. That could be the case, but back when these motors were young Ford spun the bore diameter as optimal for emissions. Wether this was simply spin intended to cover for an engine layout compromised soley to create a one size fits all design, or wether this was actually another consideration in development, is something we will likely never know.

jsaylor

I agree with most of what you say. But, I'm not sure that the Boss V-8 is actually going to be bigger than the Mod Motor in any ways which will be problematic. Any potential smaller displacement Boss V-8's which Ford could build (for example say 4.8-5.2L) would certainly employ a block design utilizing a much smaller deck height than the current 4.6L Romeo engines do. In fact, a ~300ci Boss V-8 would likely look a lot like the old 302 Windsor V-8 in terms of bore/stroke relationship, which may give a better example of what we can reasonably expect in terms of packaging changes.

Yes, larger bore spacing theoretically makes for a wider engine, but you have to take stroke and the resulting deck height into account to get an idea of actual width as I'm sure you know. I'm inclined to believe a Boss V-8 of similar displacement poses a good argument for being a narrower package than the Mod motor design currently is. And the Boss will obviously utilize a shorter deck height than the Mod motor does, making the overall package shorter. Length will certainly increase at least a little, but this has seldom been problematic for the Mod Motors (ironic, huh?) and there is certainly room to grow her....especially if it gives back some width and height in the process.

blkstang06

The January issue of Mustang Monthly has the engine I want It sits in a UP restomod 427 FE engine with DC&D electronic fuel injectoin... 525hp n/a, its beautiful!....

V10

If emissions were the consideration, Ford could have used a wider bore spacing but still used the same small bore diameter allowing for future growth.

The emissions story was more after the fact spin to justify the insanely small bore size of the Mod motor than any real need to reduce the bore.

You want proof, GM somehow managed to keep it's 4" bore, 1950s design small block V8 meeting emissions requirements and putting out more HP than Ford engines though the late 90s when the Chevy SBCII finally came out.

jsaylor

I understand your argument, and am well aware that Ford could have kept wider bore spacing for the Mod motor's whatever bore they chose to employ, and I'm well aware that the smallblock Chevy kept it's ~4 inch bore, but spin or not Ford's entire take on this is worth mentioning since we can likely never really know how the process went down and how influential these things might have been. Either way the simple fact is that the Mod motors small bore hurt the engines power potential, especially when NA, and those days would appear to be ending relatively soon.

bob

I dunno, as maligned as the mod motors are, I think I will miss 'em when they are gone, to bad they didn't at least have the PI heads and better intake when they introduced the 4.6 in the mustang or better yet had the VVT 3v 4.6 from the get go. Oh well hindsight is 20/20

JETSOLVER

The way I gamed this out, there will again be two deck heights. The 6.2l truck version(and any follow on larger gas engines+ any diesel) will probably end up with a taller deck(again the cheap and easy way to displacement is stroke), but a SOHC head should give that packaging back. And there is the not so little problem of upcoming(current in Europe) pedestrian crash regulations that almost require the lowest possible(and in some cases lower ) hood lines. This is proving a major packaging headache in near future designs.

I doubt that any 4 cam version however, will be any narrower for the very same reason the Mod was so wide. It is difficult to pkg. the exhaust side without width, just because of the short side turn radius in the port. The typical way out for that is to raise the exhaust port but then the exhaust port has to be temperature managed all the way out, and that does not help emmisions and cat light off one bit and adds weight and machining/casting cost as well as difficulty in finding room for the exhaust.

Which leads me back to my main worry. I fear that any 4 cam setup will be an after thought,not part of the initial design brief which is most assuredly emmisions and fuel economy. The reason the mod makes such big power in 4 valve guise is that it was engineered first for maximum pumping, then it was backed down to meet weight and cost targets. And for those about to take exception to the need for a 4 cam, part of the reason for the initial setup was the superior swirl(that was almost 14 years ago) of the two smaller intake valves(greater surface and cooling area), and the inital choice of the two stage intake setups on the COBRA and Lincoln engines. Two stage intakes were a direct and suboptimal response to get the hood height as low as possible for maximum flexability, even though the COBRA's all ended up with specific hoods(and the 96-98 power dome was a sexy as was ever made )
Even now, the initial B series Mod head flows as well as any aftermarket ported head when used with forced induction.

The Mod is still a force to be reckoned with. The all conquering GT engine proved that it is as good as any engine in the industry, but we just got beat by America's inexplicable need for instant torque over all other considerations. I had high hope back then that we would learn why the rest of the industry had choosen high rev, variable intake runner and valve timing engines, but we never learn.

And for those about to question that, why have the high end supercars and the uber Germans(not to mention most racing sanctioning bodies) eschewed supercharging for the most part? Because Nat Asp. is the easiest and cheapest way to control emissions and tune an engine for rev specific fuel economy. Hence the use of more and more gears in transmissions and the fact that large displacement blown cars so easily pull timing(its a function of variable combustion chamber pressure due to density as much as heat that takes the power out).

Great stuff folks, keep it up. I'm learning as much as I have in months here, and I suspect others are too.

V10

But we do know the process. It was mandated from above that the mod motor had to be short enough to fit sideways in the Continental. Hence the small bore & bore spacing. Simple as that.

jsaylor

So you know, for a fact, that Ford specifically chose this bore spacing strictly because of their plan to make the engine shorter for fwd fitment and not as a combination of that need and the pursuit of lower emissions? Unless you were there and involved in the decision, or knew somebody who was, you can't possibly know this to be absolute truth. I worked in the auto industry for quite some time, with a good part of that time spent working with engineers to help tool up and produce new product for major automakers, and I have seen far dumber decisions made for far dumber reasons than this.

V10

Yes, I know for a fact that the Mod Motor's bore spacing was chosen to meet a specific maximum overall engine length so it would fit in the Continental's engine bay "sideways". And I do know that a lot of people inside Ford were not happy with this mandate as the small bore spacing also limited the width of the main bearings. Bearings were a bit of a problem with early mod motors and they went through several updates. You can make an engine with a wider bore spacing but not use all the available space (smaller than maximum bore), leaving the engine with room to grow displacement. Ford did this with the old FE engines, starting out with a 4.00" bore and eventuall ygrowing the bore to 4.23" (bore spacing is the same).

If you do some research back to the early 1990s when the Mod Motor came out these facts were widely reported & discussed in the automotive press, professional and consumer.

And, I used to be in the machine tool business and delt with the big 3.

Knight Rider

Keep in mind that Ford´s beancounters will not like the idea of making an all new, high displacement engine, which according to them will cost a lot of money. What they probably don´t realize, is that many of their loyal Mustang buyers actually want a big engine to show off to the bowtie and Mopar guys. In addition to that, the beancounters think that a paint, bolt-om, and sticker job will attract new buyers. Ford, it might work for now, but when the ´maro and Challenger come out, the Mustang will be eating dust. You are in the business to do good cars, and good cars (especially musclecars) don´t come cheap or with minor bolt-ons

JETSOLVER

On another board, a member dug up a quote from Car and Driver way back in 81. I ask you to think on the paralells, as I did in that thread.

http://www.blueovalforums.com/forums...dpost&p=125204

My response, I hope some read the others as well.

http://www.blueovalforums.com/forums...dpost&p=125457

Mach, this wasn't directed at you, you merely point out some things that define the thinking. I do not want to be negative on Ford, but as the fall and early winter have progressed, they have not said the right things to indicate that they "GET IT". So much is wrong, and so many shiny shoes need to be stepped on that the sort of people who REcreated the Mustang performance heritage back in 93 and sustained it through the fall of 06 are no longer around for us, and are no longer a part of the organization at Ford.(Every one who was a major force behind SVT is gone. Every one of them. Product planning, engineering, sales and loyalty, and marketing.) There is where the understanding of our performance specific market went. Feel that cold wind from empty halls?

I fear greatly that Ford is about to bring a knife to a gunfight, one that they set up back in 03 when they put a temporary end to GM's pony aspirations. They have let the enemy back in the game by leaving a door of opportunity(just watch how much more sophisicated the Brand X cars are, and how much higher the profit per unit is)and like any Bond type flick, if you take time out to gloat, the enemy will always come back to defeat you. Brand X cars are taking a direct shot at 150 000 units of a market that the Mustang currently is the sole occupier of with sales numbers just north of 150 000 units! When are you going to replace your stang and why? Would you buy another just to keep Mustang viable until a full engineering fix in 2011? Because right now, all Ford is concerned with is the new F-150 and other product, Or we would have had that mid life update next year, not down the road another.

V10

The Hurricane Engine was killed a few years ago by the bean counters.

When Mark Fields got promoted he resurected it (as the Boss) because Fields is smart enough to understand that Ford's engines in both its trucks and performance cars (Mustang) are flat out not competitive (unless a S/C is bolted on and without a competitive V8 Fords high profit truck sales WILL tank.

The bean counters at Ford used to have the final say on EVERYTHING. Within the last month, thanks to Ford's new CEO Mulally, some corporate by laws were changed to remove some of the bean counters power in relation to capital spending.

Let's hope these moves by Fields and Mulally are not too little, too late.

bob

Quote:

Or do you really believe you didn't want a leading edge IRS and other class competitive features

Hey that'd be me, I'm pretty happy with my strut front end and 3-link rear.

jsaylor

I worked with the big three and several other auto makers for many years myself, and am well aware of the discussions you mention. And I am familiar with the Mod motor's design and it's shortcomings But I have, as yet, seen nothing that would indicate with certainty that the emissions argument had nothing to do with Mod motor's small bore and subsequently small bore spacing. Nothing definative has ever stated outright that fwd fitment was the only consideration, and until I see something relatively irrefutable that states the same I will likely remain unconvinced. And it is worth noting that I feel this way largely because of my experience with the big three.

Planning for ten and twelve cylinder variants, emissions considerations, and fwd fitment issues were all factors in this decision to some extent. There is, at this point, far too little in the way of real evidence to say the fwd fitment issue was soley responsible. If you have a source who indicates otherwise and is definative, or even relatively close, I'd have no trouble buying it, anf frankly it is the most loigcal answer...always has been. But so far one has not appeared of which I am aware to confirm the same absolutely. And I have been burned far too many times when applying logic to the big three's decision making to do so again.

V10

You are confusing 2 different aspects of the Mod Motor's design.
1. External physical size.
2. Internal bore & stroke size.

Yes, the ratio of bore to stroke on the mod motor was chosen for emissions reasons.

However, the bore spacing had NOTHING to do with emissions. The bore spacing, which then determines the maximum bore size, was chosen for packaging reasons.

Ford could have very easily made the mod motor with 110 mm bore spacing but still made the first Mod Motors with the same 90.2mm bore for emissions reasons. This would have given the mod motor room to grow in the future. Ford had done that with almost every prior V8 engine design. Starting out with 110 mm bore spacing would have saved Ford hundreds of millions of dollars in future costs. But 100mm was selected because of an engine length restriction, not because of emissions.

jsaylor

I understand what you are saying, always have, but you are still missing my point. Let me explain.

Your argument obviously relies on the assumption that engineers would not have made the bore spacing so ridiculously small for any reason but a forced packaging compromise. And my argument is...why would we assume that? Why would we limit the possibility of short-sightedness, or even stupidity, to everyone but the engineers?

The Mod motor has a bore spacing of 3.9 inches and change, leaving room for a bit more than the motors standard 90mm bore even if much more is pushing the envelope. Why would we assume that the engineers developing this engine were given packaging criteria which limited them to such a small overall length, and bore spacing, and ignore the possibility that they made the package, and thereby the bore spacing, smaller than they had to? Without doubt a short pakcage size was required, but were the requirements this extreme? Did the engineers go the requirements one better for other reasons even if they seem pointless to us? The argument that Ford engineers had, in prior designs, always made bore spacing larger than necessary in anticipation of pontentially larger bore versions in the future has some merit, but new mistakes are made every day, and I wont excuse engineers from the pool of potential offenders based on what different engineers working for the same company did previously.

As indicated above we do know that the engineers were tasked with making the motor short enough for easy installation into fwd platforms, but far longer engines than the Mod motor have been fitted to fwd vehicles. The fwd packaging argument alone does not rule out the possibility that engineers made the design even smaller than they had to. In a scenario where the Mod motors ~90mm bore was considered attractive for reasons other than packaging, like emissions, plenty of ammunition exists to theorize that engineers could have taken a small package even further. Add in the argument that smaller is better in terms of engine packaging and the possiblity gains even more merit.

Based on my own experience I have no problem imagining engineers, having decided that a ~90mm bore is optimal for emissions and will therefore be employed in all forseeable future variants, and in possession of the knowledge that 10 and 12 cylinder variants would eventually join the family to address the issue of larger displacement version of the design, questioning why they would design in more bore spacing than needed to accomodate a ~90mm bore even if they had the option to do so. Would I agree with that argument? No. But my belief that the same is short sighted or even illogical does not make it any less likely to have occured. As I have stated before in this thread I have seen engineers make decisions far more questionable than these for far dumber reasons. Why would I assume Ford's engineers are fundamentally different?

I am making assumptions about the potential order of events to be sure....but since we don't know what order these decisions were made in, what criteria the engineers had to work within, or what weight each particular issue carried, assumptions would seem to be the order of the day. The above is but one of countless possible scenarios.

You are too eager to excuse engineers from responsibility here IMO, especially as many of the truly bad decisions I saw during my time in the auto biz were made by the same. Frankly, I'm surprised that you are so quick to dismiss the idea that engineers could have done something this ill-advised without being forced to given your apparent experience in the business. In my experience, and without any intention of insulting anyone, an engineer left unsupervised is like a Lieutenant with a map....a disaster waiting to happen. There are exceptions of course, but engineers can be as unrealistic as accountants in my experience even if the bean counters do seem to get all the guff.

V10

We're beating a dead horse at this point.

Much of the mod motor's design criteria was determined by Ford's marketing & finance departments, not the engineers.

You're choosing to ignore well documented information on the mod motor's design criteria & history which is making further discussion pointless.