WHY THE BEST ENGINES ARE NOT ALWAYS RIGHT FOR A PROJECT CAR

Marty and MOOG have caused quite a lot of online commentary with their Monaro and XR8 projects (if you need a refresher try CLICKING HERE). And that's fair enough, as we've all got our tribal allegiances to brands or types of engines, and the sight of an empty bay conjures all manner of saucy ideas.  

Some commentators are starting to really get shouty about their hope for a Coyote swap into the Falcon or Monaro. I fully understand the appeal of the Ford V8, and this was actually something which was discussed behind the scenes for MOOG's XR8 before the realities of life stepped in.

And sometimes life is but one issue which stops the perfect engine being swapped into a given project car. Let me explain...

While I'm on record as a huge fan of the LS V8 (I have owned a bunch and we put a very spicy supercharged one in my '64 Pontiac seen on MCMTV2) the Ford Coyote is an engine that I firmly believe is one of the best V8s around today. 

What is a Coyote? Well, it's the modern five-litre V8 (or 302 cubic-inches in the old money) based around Ford's "Modular" motor family that debuted way back in 1990. Ford switched their passenger car and light-duty pick-up trucks to a controversial smaller-capcity, fuel-injected overhead-cam V8 back in 1990 and they are a good thing which unfairly live in the shadow of the GM LS. 

There'd been some awesome Mod Motors released (SVT Mustang "Terminator", SVT Cobra R, and 2005 Ford GT), but things started really coming together for Ford in 2011 with the launch of the 5.0-litre Coyote variant of the Mod Motor in the all-new, retro fifth-generation Mustang.

Packing between 307kW (412hp) and 357kW (486hp) this all-alloy EFI V8 featured a forged steel crankshaft, rev-happy square bore/stroke design, strong six-bolt mains, high 11:1 compression ratio (later generations of Coyote upped this to 12:1) for snappy throttle response, and deep-breathing quad-cam cylinder heads. With a six-speed manual it made the new-gen Mustangs feel like a proper performance car.   

Part of what made it so good, apart from the great base architecture light weight (at 195kg or 430lb), is the Ti-VCT independent variable cam timing on both intake and exhaust camshafts that works in real-time. This means the engine is able to operate at peak efficiency in the driving environment it is currently in, so there's always performance there. 

And they can make ridiculous power. 

The green Mustang is Brett La Sala's infamous "Snot Rocket", powered by a Coyote making over 3000hp at the hubs. Sure, it's a long way from stock but this thing has run epic numbers on the drag strip, while Coyotes have also been used to smash fields in circuit racing, hill climbing, drifting, and more. The strong bottom-end and deep-breathing top-end means Coyotes take to boost (superchargers or turbos) like an unsupervised boomer takes to AI-generated conspiracy videos on social media platforms.

So if this engine is so good, why am I making out they have problems that prevent bulk people from jamming Coyotes into as many and varied cars as possible?

It comes down to a few factors, but (very generally) you can say: locality, size, cost, and scope of work being the main reasons.

 Any engine can be made to fit any car, but there are some key reasons why this absolute pearler of an engine might not be the one you should automatically gravitate to for an engine swap. 

Let's first talk about physically fitting an LS versus the morally superior Coyote into a car they weren't designed around. You can see in the image above (which I shamefully stole from Google Images as I didn't have a Coyote and LS3 in my back pocket to compare) just how big the Ford 5.0 is versus a 6.2-litre LS3.

Fitting this into a car with strut towers or narrow chassis rails up front requires a LOT of work, and this can be difficult in Australia with our fairly strict rules about modifications in street cars.  Those awesome DOHC heads take up enormous real estate and will often hugely complicate exhaust routing, which ends up costing a lot of money to fix.  

The packaging issues complicates the time it takes to complete a Coyote swap which is where problem #2 pops up. MOOG and Marty have enough other project cars they want to put time and effort into sorting, so neither of them wanted to be spending months making either a drift pig Falcon or Marty's itch-scratching Monaro different for the sake of it when the engines they both chose would work just as well at the jobs they'd be doing, but in a fraction of the time. 

This brings us to point #3: cost. In America the Coyote swap is a vastly easier thing to achieve, as they've been fitted to all manner of cars and pick-up trucks for 15 years now. In Australia, we've only had them in a small number of FG and FG-X Falcons and locally delivered Mustangs since October 2010. 

This means even high-mileage wrecker Coyotes are expensive Down Under.

For Aussies the process of finding all the parts needed to make a Coyote swap run in their car can be a laborious challenge, unless you're starting absolutely from scratch and are prepared to spend a bunch of time and money importing everything to make it work.  

The different generations of Coyote can also catch people out. Since 2018 Coyotes have been available with direct-injection fuelling, which greatly complicates swaps for many people. Changing the engine back over to port EFI isn't quite as simple as banging an earlier intake manifold on, swapping to an older wiring harness, and slapping it on its rump. 

DI engines aren't supported by every aftermarket ECU, and factory ECUs can be a pain to sort out if you aren't experienced with getting around inbuilt security, body control modules, CAN lanuage, and more - even the tuning software (if you're not a Ford expert, for instance) can be a huge headache as you'd need to learn a whole new programme. 

There are also some hurdles with aftermarket parts. While the industry has definitely got WAY more go-fast equipment on sale today than there was even 5 years ago, things like dress-up parts (rocker covers, for instance), and other hardware can be expensive on Coyotes.   

Changing cams requires four-times the investment compared to doing one cam in the caveman-spec LS, while the timing chains, guides, and associated hardware are also all more expensive thanks to their more complicated engineering. All those benefits of the Coyote can come back to bite when it's time to rebuild one, though there are some amazing Coyote and Coyote-based crate engines you can get

I really wanted to go here just to shout-out to one of the best-sounding V8s I've heard, which was a stock 5.2-litre "Aluminator" crate motor in a 1966 Mustang I saw running at the Optima Street Car Invitational many years ago. A factory-built hot rod Coyote displacing 5.2-litres with no forced-induction, making the same 430kW (580hp) as GM's 6.2-litre supercharged LSA cate motor. Meow!

Ford also released a 5.2-litre flat-plane crank variant of the Coyote called the Voodoo, in the GT350 Mustang. Producing 386kW (526hp) and revving to 8250rpm it was the most powerful naturally-aspirated V8 released in the 2015 GT350 circuit-oriented Mustang. Above this they later released a 566kW (760hp) supercharged variant called the "Predator" V8 in the range-topping GT500 Mustang - this engine is vastly different to the supercharged 5.0-litre Coyote-based "Miami" V8 used in Aussie FG and FG-X Falcons.   

Ultimately there's only one person who needs to be happy with the engine that gets fitted to a car: and that's the owner of that car. The person paying the bills, servicing it, and driving it is really the one person who needs to be satisfied as to whether the additional time, money, headaches and complexity is all worth it.  

If you've got one project car that you're pouring your heart and soul into, and you're happy to spend months or years getting every detail absolutely bang-on, take the time and do it with the engine you want. But, if you're trying to get your car back onto a track, or you want to simply drive a car you're missing, why not focus on getting it running using the quickest method possible? 

Before I go, I also need to mention something (info below):

Now, before the General Motors fans howl the house down that I've ignored the new 680hp LT6 and 1065hp LT7 5.5L quad-cam engines from the eighth-generation Corvette, I have left them out on purpose, even though they are (pound for pound) even better than The Mighty 'Yote. 

Firstly, these engines are not available as crate engines, and are not yet stacked 10-high at local wrecking yards. While the C8 Corvette has been out for a while now, the new LT6 and LT7 engines are ONLY available in the very rare, high-end Z06 and ZR1 high-performance Corvette models. 

Secondly, while they carry an "LT" prefix these DOHC-per-bank 5.5-litre engines share NOTHING with the direct-injected pushrod V8s used in other General Motors cars. The LT6 and LT7 come from the "Gemini" line of engines and have been specifically engineered for use in mid-engined cars meaning fitting them to a front-engined Monaro from 20 years ago would be a huge engineering challenge... if you could even FIND one of these engines for sale (or afford it). 

Controlling that engine would be another challenge. So yes, I left these engines out, for now, as they're an even worse option for an engine swap compared to the Coyote. While a 1065hp factory standard V8 seems cool, I'd argue building a 580hp Aluminator-powered car that's actually running and driving is way cooler.