Ok first off, this is about a Ford. I don’t condone owning one, or even liking them. I’m just passing on the facts because if a Ford can do it, I’m sure a Mopar could do it better…

So I work with a young kid who bought a 5.0 mustang at the end of last year. It’s an ’86 and I’m pretty sure it was the last virgin unmodified 5.0 mustang on the planet. So he puts a set of drag radials on it, and a 3.73 gear. It immediately breaks the trans. So over the winter it got a good clutch, and a decent trans.

This sping he’s been talking to me about hopping it up. Headers, intake, heads, cam, etc… I kept telling him, “why don’t you just buy a turbo kit for it?” So finally he took my advice. $1500 spent on ebay, and his Turbo kit shows up at his door. Fuel pump, injectors, turbo, headers, most of the piping, and a little intercooler.

So he puts this kit on… It went to the chassis dyno and in N/A stock (waste gate open, so no boost) form it made 185hp to the wheels. Pretty much on par for a DEAD stock mustang.

So then on the first turbo pull, he tells me that at 9psi of boost, they had to shut it down because they were worried it was going to break the block. 540ft/lbs at the tires at 3800rpm.

At this point, I’m thinking…”uh huh…sure it did.”

So they take some timing out of it, and make some more pulls. At 9psi, on pump gas, with only 18 degree’s it “supossidly” made 420HP to the wheels and 510ft/lbs.

And again, I’m thinking…”uh huh…sure it did.”

Later in the week, we were talking about the whole thing. I told him, “Eric, it’s not that I’m trying to be a jerk or anything, but don’t you think that Dyno might be a little happy? I mean, you picked up 235HP, on a 185HP base motor, with only 9psi of boost, and even less then stock timing…” He kind of saw my point, and I think he was a little skeptical too then.

Well the car went to the track yesterday. Granted this kid has probably only made 20 passes down the strip in his whole life, so he’s not exactly Ronnie Sox’s.

11.99@117mph.

Guess I’ll be eating my hat for lunch today…

Just amazing.

I had a dream last night that I bought a $500 Cordoba with a low compression smog 400 in it, just so I could slap a turbo on it…