Shop Fits ‘Godzilla’ 7.3-liter Crate V8 into a Fox Body
‘Godzilla’ V8 is supposed to be in a Super Duty cag, but one of them broke loose and invaded the engine bay of this Mustang.
Ford offers a wide array of Mustang engines and power-adding options. You can get the EcoBoost 4-cylinder engine in two states of tune. The 5.0 makes 460 horsepower in the GT and an extra 20 in the Bullitt. Ford’s 5.2-liter V8 is available with and without a supercharger. But as this video from the YouTube channel REVan Evan (hosted by Evan J. Smith) shows, one shop in Taylor, Michigan area went a completely different route with their Mustang project vehicle. Team Z Motorsports dropped the all-new “Godzilla” 7.3-liter V8 made for the 2020 Super Duty into a Fox Body.
As you can imagine, fitting such a large engine into a space originally designed to hold a 5.0 wasn’t a completely trouble-free process. Team Z’s Dave Zimmerman tells Smith, “We had to make a slight modification to the oil pan and then drop the steering rack about an inch and a half so that we could get the crank centerline in the determined area that we thought would be optimal for the Fox Body and SN95.” Zimmerman and his crew also fabricated solid motor mounts and a custom K-member. Zimmerman adds, “The oil cooler was a bit of a challenge because of the steering shaft location.” Luckily, he found a way to relocate it and even delete it outright.
Team Z didn’t do all of this work just for fun. They’re going to sell hardware and kits that will enable power-hungry Fox Body and SN95 Mustang owners (so…all of them) to give their cars Godzilla grunt. According to Zimmerman, a stock radiator will fit up front. Installing the headers will only require bolting them in. Team Z will eventually offer the motor mounts and K-member designed to fit this 445-cubic-inch beast, as well as a transmission crossmember.
Under the hood of the 2020 Super Duty, Godzilla generates 430 horsepower and 475 lb-ft of torque. That means it’s down on ponies compared to the Coyote V8, but way up on pulling power. But Team Z’s Brian Wolfe points out something important about those stock figures. Those were generated when the engine was connected to a full exhaust and truck air inlet system. If you swap in less restrictive, more aggressive hardware, those numbers will go up substantially. Wolfe tells Smith, “You start putting some camshafts in here, start doing some port work on the heads, I think up the compression ratio a bit, I think that a 600-horsepower type variant is going to be pretty easy to come across with just very simple bolt-ons.”
So there you have it, folks. If you were thinking about what to put in your next Mustang project, the new 7.3-liter seems to be a viable option. Why are you still reading this? Whip out that credit card and get started!