2005Redfire6

+1, looks the same to me besides the intake manifold.

VistaBlue

It's pretty out of hand, really. I don't think the current-gen Mustang community knows just how well off they are...

With the 2011 5.0, you're making between 350-380whp stock. With the current plethora of blowers available, people are making between 500-600whp. That's a 150-250whp gain over stock, on an otherwise stock motor. I don't understand why people are so incapable of realizing how ridiculous that is.

Roll on over to a WRX, EVO, or Genesis 2.0T forum, and read for a bit. These guys are lucky to be able to put out more than 100whp over stock without something grenading. The Genesis' 2.0T has problems putting down more than 50-75whp over stock without a piston coming out of the block, lol. The WRX and STi guys end up shredding transmissions, rear ends, and engine blocks just trying to get near 400whp. These are factory boosted cars, but everyone knows you have to pay to play. You can't just expect to double the power without cracking the motor open.

This is a golden era. Any production car that can exceed over 500whp without any internal changes to the motor is pretty sick in my book, nonetheless 600+whp. Heck, JPC's car was running 803whp on the stock block.

Dreamtheory

nice find, thanks for posting!

jaguarking11

No offense to you guys, but forged rods mean different things to different people.

When most people talk about forged rods, they talk about a beefier heavier rod that has also been forged.

When ford is talking about a forged rod, they are talking about building a rod that is light weight enough to spin over 7500rpm. Sometimes a forged rod is no stronger than a non forged one, but its designed for lightness, so they made a lighter weight rod that is forged but no stronger than required.

Anyone here ever hold a forged H beam rod weigh in over a pound by-itself? Thats a heavy piece to keep accelerating and decelerating 62 times a second. Engine harmonics anyone?

However a modern after-market forged beafy rod will just barely keep up with 8k rpm before becoming a rubber band.

JIM5.0

I am of the same school of thought. And considering that everyone and their dog are now making blowers and turbos specifically for the 5.0L Coyote, even FRPP, it will not be long before someone makes the idiot move of pulleying down to push 20+ PSI boost into the manifold on the stock 11:1 CR pistons!
Bad news for the poor block, heads, gaskets, pistons, rods, and more.

The less knowing who read the Boss Coyote has forged pistons and they read "sintered forged" on the conrods might be falsely led to believe the rods are true forged and they totally forget the massively high 11:1 CR, even though the pistons are forged, and the try to go for high teens manifold boosts. Again, not good news for the engine at so many levels.

I for one totally HATE how car manufactures try to pass sintered forged rods as true forged rods. Yes, the true forged rods, especially the H-beam ones, are heavier, but it is necessary to take high boost applications. And regardless of the weight of these heavy duty rods, the power gained from boosting will more than overpower the linear and rotational inertias such that the car will not skip a beat.

VistaBlue

A high compression ratio doesn't automatically mean a motor can't take high boost. It simply leaves less room for error, and a higher margin of risk. You guys don't seem to understand that no matter what compression ratio you're running, no matter how thick and beefy your internals are..there is always a certain degree of risk involved in boosting.

I don't think he was talking about so much about the increased mass and it's accompanying inertial downfalls, but rather more about the increased friction and it's role in engine harmonics. I'm making up these weights, but, in theory, a 500 gram rod will cause the motor to run considerably smoother at faster engine speeds when compared with a 600 gram rod.

In this application, going with the lightest rod possible - that is still able to withstand stock or moderately higher power levels - is the absolute best thing to do, both from a monetary and performance stand point.

If Ford has to shell out an additional $100.00 (again, making up the numbers) per motor to have forged rods, think of that over the span of 100,000 motors. That's an additional $10,000,000.00 in capital they would need to come up with in order to produce the motors with those rods. When the bean counters ask them if it's necessary, they'll be hard pressed to convince them it is. I don't think the engineers saying "think of the aftermarket tuners!!" will convince the financial officers at Ford it's a worthwhile investment. Think back to that 12-something page article with the Coyote development team. They were given a target price point, and several things they wanted to do just couldn't fit the budget - connecting rods being one of them.

These rods are lighter than forged rods, but also strong enough to handle stock *and higher* power levels. This is key when working with a factory performance vehicle, because we need to think about warranty issues as well. Having a heavier rod in place unnecessarily opens up all kinds of possible issues involving crank walk, premature wear of the rod bearings, increased NVH, etc etc. Any additional weight to the rotating assembly increases the risk of failure, and so it's best to keep the parts as light as possible.

MELLOWYELLOW06

Here is my contribution

JIM5.0

Actually, what more of us are concerned about is that the Coyote is already a high compression engine a, putting boost on top of that increases the risk you are describing.
What more of us are thinking is if you want higher boost in the mid-teens PSI manifold and up, dropping the compression ratio will be necessary to reduce said risk.
No one is denying that there is increased risk in boosting, it's just that we are thinking about what is considered reasonable risk.
I know it will always be relative because to the top fuel racer, who basically throws away the entire engine after a few passes, they do not care if the engine grenades. So they boost the hell out of their engines and put on fuel injectors that douse in more fuel than a garden hoes can.
But to the vast majority of us who do not want that kind of risk, we being the people who do not have that kind of money to spend on a new engine every weekend. So of course, we all tend to think much more conservatively.
And going with a reduced compression ratio for the trade off to gain high boosts is a compromise that helps bring the risk to a more reasonable level, even though the risk is still there, but not as probable than if retaining the very high 11:1 CR.

Actually, friction is a very small factor when increasing from either moment or linear inertias from heavier parts. One can argue that centripetal forces are increased from more imbalance of heavier rotating and reciprocating parts, but that is actually not a performance killer as far as the power gains from boosting and/or nitrous.
Now, counter balancing the heavier parts is very possible, if the NVH from a shaking engine is a concern. A modified crankshaft will be required in this case. But factory produced crankshaft with the appropriate counter weights already designed into it to account for the heavier true forged rods would be the best options since the engineers will have done the appropriate calculations to minimize imbalance. Modding a crank that is not designed for heavier conrods and other parts will be a different thing since most crank modders are not engineers, and if they were, they would have to custom balance each crank individually to account for the specific conrods chosen.

Well, considering that the boss is such a limited production car, that $100 increase over numbers produced will not hurt actually. Compared to the overall profits of FoMoCo as a whole, spending that $100 more, $200 more, or even $1000 more per Boss will not cause a massive loss to Ford's profits.
I cannot remember the exact limits, but the Boss is not allowed to reach 3500 units produced. If someone remembers the exact production cap, please post. So, assuming $1000 increase for forged conrods and redesigned crank to balance the increased weight to eliminate engine NVH, $3.5mil loss overall out of Ford's profits is really nothing, and Ford will still have given the public a value holding collector car that will eventually appreciate in value over time.

Now, if you are talking about non-limited production cars and such high production numbers are reached, then you are correct.

Concerning imbalance from heavier conrods, if the factory installs true forged rods, the engineers will no doubt redesign the crank counterweights to bring the engine back into balance again and thus eliminate the engine NVH and other associated problems (premature bearing wear, etc. and the other associated failure risk).
Once can argue that a reciprocating piston engine will never be in balance, and that is absolutely correct, but by crank counterbalancing, and balancing for heavier con-rods, it is possible to reduce that imbalance back to what a non-Boss stock Coyote engine sees.

jaguarking11

The rod size has everything to do with RPM, true forged rods I have a feeling would fair much worse if say the engine was over revved to lets say 9k. Which more than one person driving manual trans has done before on modular engines.

Lets just run the math here.

for a 3v spinning @ 6500rpm with its 90mm stroke will result in a piston speed of 19.5 meters per second. Which is very respectful, its also why the rods are very skinny and light. Now the aftermarket H beam rods are nearly 600grams, that is around a pound per piston.

a 3v spinning @ 7500rpm is around 22.5 meters per second. That's the same as a crotch rocket bike spinning @ 14000rpm.

a 5.0L has a stroke of 92.7mm and at 7500rpm redline its covering 23.175 meters per second.
now the same 5.0L spinning @ 8500rpm its covering 26.265 meters per second.

Being that both are oem engines, the rods will hold with 1000rpm or so higher rpm than stock.

Lets contrast this to the 458 Italia ferrari, redline is 9000 rpm. The stroke is 81mm and the max piston speed is 24.3 meters per second.

All this math is fine and dandy. However to put things in perspective.

The forces excreted on parts between the 3 engines are as follows. (aprox g's rounded)

3v @ 6500rpm 666.42G's
5.0L @ 7500rpm 786G's
458 @9000rpm 830.45G's

Lets say the Factory rod weighs in @ 350grams and the Forged rod weighs in @ 500grams

Here is the weight difference @ full tilt.
Stock 3v
233.247 Kg - 514 lb
Forged 3v
333.21Kg - 734 lb

Stock 5L
275.1Kg - 606 lb
Forged 5.0L
393 Kg - 866 lb

Italia Stock
290.5 Kg - 640 lb
Forged Italia
415.225Kg - 915 lb

The conclusion is that on the crank there would be a difference of 260lb per piston on the car. In total there would be 2080 lb MORE load on the crank.

You can go forged beafy, or you can go lightweight. But not both. As you can see the 5.0L being the stroke it is its already under fairly heavy strain from factory. I didn't even calculate the difference between the factory redline and a mild bump in redline.

This may be a limited engine but I bank ford is doing this to cash in on the aftermarket crowd and will sell BOSS packages before long. However doing things naturaly aspirated is the hard way to do things.

Take this car for what it was designed to be. A car you can drive to the track, kick some major butt, then drive it home. It still is supposed to function as a normal car. For them to put forged heavy rods in it would be counter productive. To me it looks like they took powdered rods to a whole new level, they kept the weight down and heat treated them for strength while maintaining a reasonable weight. Kudos to ford, they built my dream engine for reasonable money.

VistaBlue

Those are all definitely valid points. With regards to limited production of the BOSS however, I was more generalizing about the Coyote as a whole. People tend to whine about it not having forged rods constantly, and I was attempting to brainstorm why.