Just finished watching the engine masters episode where they Dyno the rotson's 5.0 with the powrstroke turbo on it. I want one now.
Yeah, I posted it up in the Awesome Auto thread a few days ago. Thing is, you and I can't do that with our stock non-HO 5.0s. You should read this first to see the differences:
http://www.allfordmustangs.com/forums/5-0l-tech/137670-5-0-vs-5-0ho-differences.html
Short version - as they briefly mentioned, the 5.0HO they pulled from the junkyard was an 87-92 motor that came *stock* with forged pistons which mean they can take this high level of boost. The stock roller camshaft also helps with opening the valves under boost not just because of the friction reducing rollers but because it's a much stronger steel piece instead of iron. We don't have any of those in a non-HO 5.0 of this era; we got a kinda crappy flat tappet cam, with a block set up for flat tappet, complete with inexpensive non-hyper-eutectic cast pistons. We'd have to do some significant rebuilding to get our 5.0s to where a stock 5.0 HO of that era was.
In your case, at least, you can get a Mustang 5.0HO to drop pretty much straight in with little issue. The trucks have some issues with that; the ideal setup if you were going to make something that was the best of all worlds to be cheaply ready for boost would be to get an Explorer's GT40 motor which has the HO firing order, HO style cam and roller system and better heads/intake than the HO, then swap the Explorer's rods and pistons with those out of an HO. Exploder 5.0s have the weaker hypereutectic pistons off the 93-95 HO. Anything more than light-to-mild boost is an expensively bad idea, from what I've seen.
Since I plan to someday put a blower on my Bronco, you can probably guess what my rebuild plan for the Exploder 5.0 I also intend to put in it are.
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Considering a 5.0 engine only had 280hp to start with...
The contemporary Porsche 911 had a 3.2L displacement motor that made 217hp. And wasn't a whole lot smaller physically.
And speaking of which, the "top" big sport-luxury coupe out of Europe at the time was the Mercedes 560SEC. Which out of it's very advanced, carefully crafted, precision engineered V8 made IIRC 238hp and 287lb/ft in the US market. How did the Germans manage to make so little additional power after dumping so much money, time and effort into their larger-than-the-Ford 5.6L V8?
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I think they were only rested at something like 225 in stock form. Of course that's a slightly different way of rating them since they run accessories.
Should also be noted for our foreign cousins that don't know these engines very well: ~280hp naturally aspirated *at the rear wheel* is almost trivial to obtain on the 5.0HO, as you know. My own initial plans for a NA Exploder 5.0 engine (closely related to the late 5.0HO) were coming up with an conservatively estimated crankshaft output of about 350hp with just a cam and exhaust change (other people have already done it and gotten dyno numbers, and the local 'name' engine builders verified.)