I had a customer from Missouri call me and tell me that he has a blown up '10 GT. He said that he had a shop install an Edelbrock E-Force and dyno tune it; 750 miles later she let loose. It was only making 430 RWHP according to the installing shop's dyno.

When we pulled the engine and took it apart there was some major carnage- check out the pics. He said that his wife drove the car back and forth to work and he wanted to build a fast street car for her. So needless to say when we're done with this car there isn't going to be many stock parts on it.

It's getting a Ford Racing Aluminator shortblock spec'd for supercharged cars, stage 3 ported heads with 1mm oversized valves, big blower cams, head studs, 1 3/4" American Racing headers, 3" mid-pipe, 3,000 stall converter, GT 500 dual fuel pump kit, 60 # injectors, Innovator's West 15% overdrive balancer, smallest blower pulley available for the E-force and our dyno tune.

Check out the pics below. The picture with all of the chewed up metal and aluminum parts is what was sitting in the oil pan when we took it apart.

 

**** thats crazy

 

wow man, that is brutal. It looks like the car just

 

Yeah it did. He said the engine blew up when they were driving it easy and it shut off immediately.

 

Holy crap!

 

Wow! So was this a competition E-force kit or a base kit that had an updated tune?

 

It's a base kit and the shop that installed it did a custom tune. It was making in the 430 RWHP range.

 

Wow, that's some "secretary's car" !

This doesn't meant that if I put a blower on my 4.6 it's going to blow up too, does it?

 

So I'm wondering...

1) Did something cause a lean condition?

2) Did they put in 87 octane fuel and detonation caused this?

3) Was this too much power for the powder metal rods? (though we've seen plenty of 500 hp's without rods breaking)

 

That's why I'll be doing an M90 and associated tune.

 

jeez, for how many engine mods he/she had those are very low #s, must have been a very conservative tune. My 05 GT with a V2-SQ Vortech, throttle body, catless H pipe, and magnaflow mufflers made 436 rwhp on a pretty conservative tune.

 

You can definitely supercharge your 4.6 as long as you are safe with it, however if you're looking for high horsepower numbers it's recommended that you invest in forged internals. Generally anything under 450rwhp is considered safe and gives a cushion with the stock internals, obviously a safe tune is a necessity too. There are plenty of people running higher numbers however. What's surprising is the Edlebrock blower is considered to be one of the more efficient blowers for the 4.6 in terms of making high power on minimal boost so the engine is actually under less stress than other superchargers.

You can get many superchargers with a warranty if they are installed by an authorized dealer (Saleen, Edlebrock, Roushcharger), however when you step up from the manufacturers tune to an aftermarket tune which adds more power and boost that's where your warranty goes out the window. I'm adding the Roushcharger to mine in the new year.

 

Same here.

 

Whoops! Not good.

 

I'm curious too, can anything be pulled out of the cars computer to give us a hint as to what caused the window in the block?

 

Yep, she'll be hot-rodding to and from work. LOL

More than likely not. We have seen plenty of these cars live in that horsepower range.

 

As far as we can tell at this point it didn't go lean. The story I got from the owner was that the speed shop that did the install and tune told him that he could run it on 87 and if he was going to run it hard to run all of the 87 out and fill-it with premium. He said when it blew they were driving it easy; it's got 87 in the tank now that we need to drain.

 

We have done plenty of successful Edelbrock E-force installs, this failure was not caused by the blower. A M90 with a bad tune, faulty part or low octane fuel could just as easily blow up an engine.

 

the only mod on the car was the E-force. We are doing the mods listed on the new forged engine.

 

[quote=Stangpilot007;5954212]You can definitely supercharge your 4.6 as long as you are safe with it, however if you're looking for high horsepower numbers it's recommended that you invest in forged internals. Generally anything under 450rwhp is considered safe and gives a cushion with the stock internals, obviously a safe tune is a necessity too. There are plenty of people running higher numbers however. What's surprising is the Edlebrock blower is considered to be one of the more efficient blowers for the 4.6 in terms of making high power on minimal boost so the engine is actually under less stress than other superchargers. [quote]

Exactly right!