Termi vs coyote

67coupe said:

All in all it comes down to your budget, power goals, and how ‘finished’ you want your car.

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Love it. Reminds me of, "Cost, quality or time, you can have two of the three."

Buy another chassis and build both.

Obviously i'm biased, but that doesn't mean I don't like the coyote. I would love an 8500rpm screaming NA coyote, it's just not sensible.
But a regular coyote does nothing for me.
When you compare costs (which I have done) you could do a terminator engine for around the same as a coyote.
The problem with that is a coyote without pulling the intake or valve covers is good for mid/low 400's and much lower in torque.
Where's the cobra is a simple pulley and meter away (I bought each for $75 used) from 480rwhp and 500rwtq. Both of which easily out perform the coyote on the low end.
To get a coyote to 03/04 cobra power or above, you either need a power adder (like $5500 worth) or heads, cams and intake which are absurdly expensive.
Even then the terminator is only a whipple or kenne bell swap away from similar numbers.

My take on it, if low 400's NA are your goals, the coyote is perfect (and you aren't into torque)
If you want somewhere between 450rwhp to 600rwhp, the terminator is the logical choice.
If you need more than that, do whatever you like because it's going to be really expensive no matter how you slice it.

Some other notes, as for head flow? Who really cares when you are just stuffing it full of boost anyway. They aren't like pushrod engines, the really don't need the flow when you add a turbo or SC.
Wiring? For the record, the 03 cobra computer only take a small handful of wires to get to run. I filled an entire bin full of the wiring I pulled out of the harness's. If the condition of the wiring is someone's main worry, they shouldn't be doing a swap at all.

Reagrdless of a preference for the the 4.6 or the coyote, Ford has a long, successful history with OHC engines that started in 1959 with the F3, 1L engine. This is where the Ford and Cosworth relationship became more than cordial as they took the engine and turned it into the 5 main bearing F2 engine. Both engines operated at RPM ranges exceeding 10k. It's the RPM operating levels I'll be getting at with this.

In the mid 60's Ford along with Holman-Moody brought OHC engines to Indy and Can-Am. These were redesigns of the 255\260 and then the 289 engines. FWIW, engines my father worked on. In 65' Ford was ready for the NASCAR season with a redesign of the banned 64', high rise 427 (Because it didn't fit under the stock hood), the SOHC, mid rise 427 Cammer. The only engine NASCAR banned without ever having run a race. Stock from the Dearborn plant and before it made it to the racing teams it produced 100 HP more than Mopar's Hemi. These engines have been made to run at 10k+ RPM's along with impressive torque numbers for a high reving engine. They occasionally show up on Ebay but at prices that start around a dozen Coyotes.

There's also the Cosworth connection after Ford turned the racing engine programs over to them. The DFV engines and it's offspring were all based on Ford's platform. Platform doesn't refer to an individual engine design. It's about sliderules and calculators and the science behind the relationships of the systems that go in to an engine and maximizing efficeincies. It's a philosophy on how to go about designing an engine and it's what separates one manufacturer from another. It was Ford's philosophy that took the DFV and all of it's variations over 10K RPM's and most well over. The last DFV variant which never went in to production exceeding 30k RPM's. This was a super over square engine of less than 100 ci's but the OHC 289 could still be seen in it.

Obviously there are a lot of holes in this history with no mention of Westlake, McLaren, Kar Kraft, Cobra, the GT and much more. This is also full of the stuff people like to argue and debate but that's not what this is about.

Most everything changed with the modular engines because adaptability in both production and performance was added to the philosophy. Mostly because of advances in material sciences and electronics. But still, 4.6's have been taken to 12 - 14K+ RPM's.

What I wonder about is why haven't I heard about the Coyote being taken to these RPM levels? The engine has been around long enough now that the, "because it's too new" opinion doesn't fly. I don't think I've heard of anything over 9K? The 4.6 is evidence that it's not a "modular thing." This is a big reason for my 4.6 preference although I have a coyote in the driveway and the 4.6 is on a stand in the garage which suggests a different preference.

Any thoughts?

Coyote and add a supercharger/turbo later.

Neuron said:

Coyote and add a supercharger/turbo later.

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I've done Coyotes with Hellion, Kenne Bell and Prochargers and nothing exceeded the area of 8,500 RPM. This kind of boosting actually works at cross purposes with what's required for a high RPM engine. It's why building a boosted engine starts with lower than stock compression. High RPM engines are usually NA and have high compressions. MMR doesn't say much about how their record setting 4.6 runs at 14k+ RPM. No doubt some serious engineering and materials science is involved along with a big pile of cash. Engine Lab's web site has some articles on this.