2016 Shelby GT350 Mustang - Engineering Review

Опубликовано 11 декабря 2015, 15:00

2016 Ford Shelby GT350 Mustang - Engineering Review. The Shelby GT350 Mustang features a 5.2L flat-plane V8 engine producing 526 horsepower, making it the most powerful naturally aspirated road-going engine in Ford History. Not only that, thanks to the new flatplane crankshaft, it’s also the highest revving production V8 engine in Ford history, screaming all the way to an 8250 RPM redline.

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One of the most critical upgrades, the power plant was of course heavily focused on. Ford spent a lot of time optimizing airflow for the new 5.2 liter. We’ll start with the crankshaft and work our way up. Unlike traditional V8 engine’s of Ford’s past, the new one features a flat plane crankshaft. As you can see, this means all of the counterweights align within a 180 degree angle, and as such at any time half of the pistons are on their way up, while half are on their way down, exactly 180 degrees apart. What this does is it allows the engine firing order to alternate between each cylinder bank. Left side, then right side, left side, then right side, as opposed to a cross plane crankshaft. This evens out the exhaust pulses, improving scavenging, and ultimately vastly improving how the engine breathes.

Moving on the to cylinders, the GT350 block widens the bore a couple millimeters versus the 5.0 Coyote, giving it a total displacement of 5.2 liters. More displacement means more power, but that’s not the only benefit of increasing the bore. With a larger surface area to work with, the GT350 can employ larger intake valves, and it can keep a larger gap between the intake valve and the cylinder block, allowing for significantly improved airflow.

Before the intake valves, work has been done to the intake ports as well. The 5.0 block has cast ports, and so the efficiency of the design is limited by the manufacturing process. With the 5.2, they’ve used CNC to port the heads, and though it’s more costly, it allows for a much more precise design, so the design of the ports has been improved for enhance airflow. It’s important to note here that the surface finish isn’t the critical component here, it’s the ability to design a more efficient port based on a superior manufacturing method.

All of the airflow changes mentioned, as well as raising the compression ratio to 12:1, allow for the 5.2 to produce 526 horsepower, an impressive 102 horsepower per liter, the most power dense naturally aspirated Ford engine in a road car to date.

The improvements to the GT350 certainly aren’t limited to the engine. There’s new aero work for enhanced cooling beneath the car, as well as a rear differential cooler for the TORSEN limited slip diff at the back. Keeping the cooler at the rear of the car means shorter coolant routing, saving weight and complexity. There’s also extensive use of aluminum in the suspension, and surprisingly the base GT350 only weighs 55 lbs heavier than the base GT Mustang. Another first for the Mustang, the 350 makes use of a magnetic suspension, with damping alterations which can be made at any corner ever 7 milliseconds. Massive brakes, wide tires, and a stiff chassis finish it all out.

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