The powertrain is basically the part of the car that turns fuel or electricity into motion. It includes the engine and the parts that send power to the wheels.
It’s something people think you should do to prove you’ve really learned a hobby. In this case, they mean building an engine yourself was seen as a big milestone.
This is a part inside the engine that helps control how the valves work. Changing it can make the engine behave differently and often change how much power it makes.
Term
low-rin
This sounds like a misheard phrase about the bottom part of the engine. They mean the parts deep inside the engine that need careful measuring and assembly.
It means getting the most for your money. They’re saying some engine packages give you a lot of performance without costing as much as doing everything yourself.
This is a part that helps control when the engine’s valves open and close. A hydraulic version is usually easier to live with because it needs less adjustment.
This is a pre-built engine you can buy and drop into a car instead of building one from scratch. The ZZ-4 is a Chevrolet small-block V8 that was popular because it made decent power without a lot of hassle.
It means trying something, seeing what goes wrong, and then fixing it. In car projects, people often have to learn by doing because not every part combination works the first time.
It's the main bottom section of an engine without the top parts attached yet. People start with one when they want to build a custom engine from the ground up.
It means putting an engine together, often with upgraded parts. Car enthusiasts do this when they want more power or a different setup than the factory version.
This is a famous Chevrolet V8 engine family that people love to modify. It’s popular because there are lots of parts for it and it’s relatively easy to work on.
The oil pan is the container under the engine that holds the oil. If you find metal bits in it, that usually means something inside the engine is wearing out or breaking.
Bearings are smooth inserts that let engine parts spin without grinding themselves apart. If they wear out or don't fit right, the engine can get noisy or fail badly.
Gaskets are the thin seals that keep fluids and pressure from leaking out of an engine. When an engine is taken apart, many of these seals have to be replaced.
This means Ford is making old-school style engines again, but with newer parts and better manufacturing. They’re basically modern versions of a classic Ford V8.
This is how tightly the engine squeezes the fuel and air before it fires. More squeeze can mean more power, but it can also make the engine more likely to ping or knock.
This is an older-style V8 design where the engine uses rods to open the valves instead of having the cam up top. A 302 is the engine size, and they’re using it as a common starting point for a performance build.
This means something built to be fun on normal roads, not just for the track. It’s the kind of setup you can drive around town and enjoy without it being too extreme.
EFI is a modern way of feeding fuel to an engine using electronics. It usually starts easier, runs cleaner, and is easier to live with than a carburetor.
A small block is a type of V8 engine that’s smaller and lighter than a big block. People like them because they fit in more cars and can still make a lot of power.
A big block is a larger V8 engine that usually makes more torque and can support more power. They’re the heavy hitters in old-school muscle and race builds.
A streetcar is a car meant to be driven on normal roads, not just on a track. In car talk, it usually means a modified car that’s still legal and usable on the street.
Roush is a company that builds and tunes performance car parts. In this clip, they’re talking about going there to check the work and make sure the parts are made well.
These are the identifying numbers stamped or cast into parts. People use them to figure out if a part is correct for a certain car or year.
LIVE
It is the two guys who are at the podcast.
Here's Kevin Byrd, I am Willie B, and fired up today, man.
We have point and counter points, y'all.
It's all about Ford.
Yeah, the big blue-o was on the centerpiece
for today's discussion.
And it's all things that Ford is doing right.
So it should be a real short conversation.
No, I just can't.
Just kidding.
We can joke.
We can joke.
But they really are going after a few things,
hard, fast, and heavy.
So I'm excited, man.
And you've known, Kevin, you know Mike for a long time, right?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, man.
You know, 23, four years at Ford, a lot of the cats
pretty darn well over, especially in that powertrain group.
And man, today is one of my favorite topics
in the whole wide universe.
Well, crate engines, baby.
Yeah.
Engines.
Yes.
And they make some pretty fantastic ones over there.
And many of them come in a crate that you can order
with all kinds of do-dads and plugs and plays and whatnot.
But yeah, I'm excited to dive into this.
But I got some questions for you, Willie.
Oh, OK.
Because if we go back in time, there really wasn't
a lot of this crate engine kind of business,
whether it's from the OEs or you name it.
You had your local engine shop, and you
could have them build an engine.
But the thing to do was to build your own.
That seemed to be the right thing.
That was kind of a rite of passage.
Yeah.
How old were you when you built your first engine?
Now, by myself, it was like, you know,
it was just like 12 years ago.
But I used to be able to.
I used to not put the short box together.
I used to put heads, camshafts, and all the stuff
in the mobile part engines.
But I would have a machine shop do the low-rin.
Because I just thought it didn't have the knowledge.
Makes a lot of sense, yeah.
I met a guy who taught me the ways.
And I've been doing my own engines, I don't know,
12, 15 years now?
I've got four or five.
Let's see, now you're going to make me count.
I hate math.
Let's see, my is 69, 370s, I've got probably six or seven
of my engines that are running in my hot rods right now
that are still running from builds over the last, let's
say, five to seven years.
The first one, actually, the first engine
is still running.
God, it's got to be almost a decade now in my road runner.
A 500 cubic inch big block was the first engine
I built completely by myself in my own shop.
Everything on my own.
And that thing, personally, I can't
hide it out this weekend still running like a pissed off dog.
Man, it's awesome.
Fantastic.
Yeah, we seem to evolve to where it almost
doesn't make sense to build.
And it's so gratifying to build your own engine.
It is.
Buying that thing up for the first time in your shop
or whatever, but from a bang for buck,
from a quality, from a warranty, from all these things,
like, man, it's hard to beat, even price point, right?
Even doing it yourself, it's hard to beat.
Geez.
You know, so I can't knock anyone doing crates.
And to be honest, it's kind of where I'm headed
these days generally, because there's usually
a package that's just like, boom.
There it is.
How am I going to top that, right?
Yeah, that's key.
I don't have a dyno.
I'm not running parts over and over and trial
in this set of rings and trial in this piston
and whatever else.
Getting this thing right on the edge.
Somebody else is doing all that work
and spreading the love across whatever lineup.
Yeah, man.
I think the only saving grace on that nowadays is,
so with Chrysler, you take a 440, a stock 440,
and they have Stoker kits nowadays
that you can make him 493 cubic inches
plus a little bore.
It makes it right around 500 cubic inches.
And they got a 542 kit.
You could find a little bit of machine work.
And that's been my combo.
If you find the right combo, meaning the right hydraulic
camshaft, road camshaft, the right pistons,
you know what head gasket or the thickness
you need to run for the compression in your area.
Here, I'm at altitude, so it's a little bit different.
There's factors you got to weigh in.
You know the recipe for building a wicked combination.
And that's where I've fortunately found out.
I've got the right cam, piston, rods, heads.
So I just had this formula in my head
that's worked for a number of years.
But you nailed it, man.
Crate engines have come around.
And the guy we have on today, my good one, knows everything
there is no about crate engines.
Like, when you think crate engines,
remember when you used to get like a, you know,
somebody would think a Jasper engine was a crate engine.
You know, like, oh, I got that.
I'm ready to go.
I got that.
What was it?
The ZZ-4, small production of the, you know, like, 325 horsepower
or whatever it was, you know.
Right, right.
But now they do it.
I mean, it wasn't very inspiring.
No, no.
No, nothing.
There's big recipes for big power.
Mike's going to tell us all about it.
And I can't wait to get into this subject,
because crate engines are where it's at
in the future moving forward.
So that's what we're going to talk about, man.
I want you guys to do a podcast today.
He's Kevin Byrd.
I'm with you.
We're back after the break.
It is two guys' broadcast.
He's Kevin Byrd.
I, Willie B, would have Mike Goodwin in today.
And, man, we're going to pick his brain about crate engines.
Kevin, I need to ask you.
When was the first time you built your first engine,
like, the whole thing?
Because there was a few trial and error things.
When I say trial and error, it's mostly error.
Yes.
That I went through.
There's a trial and error phase.
We, when you go from, like, slap
the intakes, the camshafts, the heads,
and then just taking a short block and assembling everything
and putting it in.
So what was your first, you know, buy yourself
on your own engine build?
You know what, dude?
For whatever reason, maybe I was just completely foolish
or over brave, you know?
But, man, I got my first car going into turn 16.
So at 16, I had my first third gen Camaro
came with a six cylinder.
So I was completely disappointed.
So immediately I was on the path of,
how do I turn this thing into a speed demon?
So it was probably, I had a 318 in my 71 Dodge Charger
when I first got it.
And with the help of my dad, you know,
we were doing a big block 440 in a matter of a month.
I probably got through, I don't know how many months
of this thing being a six cylinder went through,
you know, learning how to rebuild the distributor,
rebuild the carburetor, those kind of things,
and somehow gaining enough confidence
that I'm just going to build my own motor.
So I got the how to build a small black Chevy,
all the smokey unit books, you know,
just book book book, because I didn't have a car dad.
So it was just young kid, punk out in the garage,
you know, handful of tools and a bunch of books
and hot rod magazines.
And I'm like, I'm doing this, you know, like,
so I literally, you know, I found myself
a small black Chevy, you know, four bolt main.
I did all the research and I got myself a steel crank.
Man, I'm like, this is going, right?
And I found a local machine shop to do all my machining.
But, you know, for me, I didn't have all the tool tools.
So, you know, I did the, I don't know,
was it good enough?
I did all the plastic gauge, right?
So I plastic gauge everything,
went through as many of the checks as I could, right?
Building the small block and sure enough,
man, if I let the thing up, it was so bad.
So it was, you know, in that 400 horse power,
small block range, big cam in it, nasty
and about 300 miles in,
I'm watching the oil pressure just, you know,
go to zero.
And I'm like, oh no.
And, you know, you're just listening to voices out there
like, oh, it's your oil pump or this.
So, you know, did the whole like swap
an oil pump in the car, like lift the motor up
just to get the oil path and didn't make a difference.
That's the all those shavings in the bottom of the pan.
So my first engine build was a massive,
probably direction in my life
because on the one hand you get so just deflated,
you know, like, oh.
But on the other hand, it just sparked my, what the hell?
You know, I got to learn, I got to figure this out.
And so, you know, 10 years later or whatever,
I'm a powertrain guy for designing engines, you know?
So it kind of spawned me in one direction.
But yeah, huge learning curve.
So it turns out machine shop,
when they machine the crank pins, they were out of round.
I don't know how they did it.
They were out of round.
So you plastic gauge it and it doesn't show,
right, this oddball thing,
unless you probably plastic gauge
to like 10 different locations.
So they, they shamed me a new crank,
but you know, kid with no dollars
having to replace all the gaskets and the bearings.
But you know, learning curve, learning curve.
So I'm, I'm, I'm 50-50 like, dude, I still look,
I've been building engines my whole life.
I've been designing them my whole life,
but I totally get how many pitfalls from who knows where
your fault, someone else's fault, right?
Can put you in a disaster zone.
So I'm a huge fan at the same time of these crate engines.
Well, they're true and tested, you know,
they're true and tested.
And that's what great about them.
Yeah. Give us, give us some skinny as far as that goes.
Like, right, how much development
you guys put in all these crate engines?
Yeah. I mean, when you look at, you know,
the example you're talking about
the old school small block, right?
We at Ford performance, we still build all those, right?
Big Ford has not built a pushrod small block
since what, 2000, right?
It went away in the Explorer.
We build all those now, those heritage,
we like to call them the heritage pushrod engines
and they're better than ever.
Every engine is internally balanced.
It uses all top quality components, right?
Forge pistons, coated, forge crank, forge rods,
all new blocks, all new components.
Everything is hot tested before it leaves the assembler.
So you know you're getting a quality piece.
You don't have to worry about your tolerances, right?
Did you get the plastic gauge just right?
You know, did, you know, did I line that up?
Is it gonna leak on you right out of the gate, you know?
Yeah. All that stuff's done.
And it comes with a warranty.
Something happens.
You call up our tech line, you talk to Marty
and it's like, I got a problem.
I lost oil pressure.
We'll work with you.
We'll figure it out.
We'll get it fixed.
We'll take care of you.
You can't, you can't beat that, you know,
on the old school heritage pushrod engine.
A lot of security in that for sure, yeah.
We talked about, you know, a known recipe
and you can put a mild engine together with a small cam
and you don't have to worry about piston
to valve clearance and huge pockets.
But you know, when you're really pushing these engines
and you look at the power output of everything
that's in your catalog, you got mild to wild.
When you start getting into that medium and wild,
man, it is a recipe not only for what's gonna
like not have valve contact,
how much compression can you put in it
without, you know, knocking on pump gas?
You know, how do you make the most power
with a combination of cam and intake and et cetera?
You guys have sorted all that
on every one of these combos
that it take you a million years as an individual
or cheating off of somebody's known recipe
and hoping that you get it right, correct?
Right, and you nailed it.
Everything from mild to wild.
We have a 302 pushrod engine, right?
340 horsepower, nine and a half to one compression.
Nice, great street cruiser engine.
All the way up to a 460 inch small block
based on the 9.5 Windsor architecture.
460 small block.
That makes joke.
Like I think 575 or 580, it makes a huge number, right?
Dude, that's legit for an old school small block.
Yeah, man.
You can fit it in anything.
And, you know, everything in between, right?
We've got a Dress 347, you can get it with a carburetor
or you can get it with the EFI.
We have a 363, we have a 427.
So we got Mr. Big Block here.
I mean, Willie, and I absolutely love it.
Willie is all big block, you know, he's a big more part guy.
So, right, he's building 540s and et cetera, like,
so he's all big block, he's all nitrous, he's blown, right?
He's always making four digits and beyond.
What is the market like that you guys see
because once you can make well over 500,
so you're making 575 out of that 460,
what's the take rate and old pushrods
between the small blocks and the big blocks now?
I sell more small blocks simply because I have more offerings.
We do offer a 572-inch big block.
That's what I'm talking about, that's what I'm talking about.
You wake, you wake over there, Willie.
What is that, what does that put down?
How much power can you let?
Yeah, man.
Yeah, well, you know, 572s are small nowadays
in the racing world, man, there's a guy
that there were 700, keeping his big blocks 900.
Yeah, I mean, sure, sure, we're talking,
let me talk crate motors.
You probably could go race, but I imagine predominantly
these are pretty nasty streetcars.
Yes, you could certainly race them
and you could even take our engines as the basis
if you wanted to go even further
or if you wanna start from scratch with a bare block
or with a short block, you can build up
from there as well.
And the cool thing about all our blocks, right?
All our cast iron, pushrod, heritage blocks
cast in the United States, machined in the United States,
four bolt mains.
That is bigger than most people probably can appreciate.
Yeah, there's no foreign blocks, you know,
like some of our low cost competitors out there.
Well, let me jump on that for a second
because there's obviously the patriotic aspect to it,
which is legit.
But, and I don't know, most people really understand
what a micron is.
It's a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a thousand.
You know, and we're talking about
to really do an engine, right?
You're talking just microns,
just fractions of tiny little, right?
So precision and everything from the casting, right?
You look at castings and you're gonna have
complete junk material, right?
All in the process, all in the raw materials
that goes into the casting, all that stuff.
So anyways, there's so much precision in an engine.
It is the most precision instrument
besides, you know, the automatic transmission
laying behind it in a car, by far.
And anyway, just to get any of the overseas stuff to me
just has so much risk to it
and what you're gonna get.
Right, and from a quality control standpoint,
I know if there's an issue myself or one of my engineers,
we can hop in a car and go to the Foundry in Indiana
or we can jump in the car and go over to Roush
and see the CNC, you know, five-axis
Makino machine that's, you know,
set up to the nth degree of precision.
And I know that every one of those blocks
that comes out of there has passed all the quality steps.
You know, it's gone through all the process.
So I am 100% confident that you're getting a good piece
in either the bare block, if you wanna build up
your own bits, the short blocks that we sell
or the complete engines, there's just no better way to go
and, you know, in my opinion.
From a cost standpoint, do you think it's a better route
to go for a guy out there who's got a,
you know, he's got an okay budget,
he's got an old Mustang or something he wants to build?
Do you think nowadays costs just the benefit
of having everything there?
It's pretty much on par
if you're going to try to build it your own
and go in one piece all these items,
because that seems to be kind of where we're at.
It's come to scale so much that it's almost, you know,
it's almost even.
Sure.
Well, if you can find a suitable donor block,
and I can tell you that the, you know,
take the eight to small block,
eight to deck height small block right now,
the parts that we're producing are far superior
than Ford ever made 20 years ago.
We redesigned the blocks.
There's more meat in the, in the webbing.
Did you hear this Kevin?
He's redoing your work.
It's, you know, it's produced on all new casting tooling,
all new machine tooling.
And, you know, in a previous life,
I used to race, used to road race
and all the Mustang guys were the block,
that old Mexico 302 block, it was a wear item.
Yeah.
Yeah, you had to search for all the right bits
and the right era, the right codes and numbers on it.
And then even then, like you said,
a lot of times you really push on these things
and they are a wear item, right?
They're a ticker.
Exactly.
And in our current 302 block,
I wouldn't be upset if someone put six or seven,
800 horsepower through it.
With spray or boost or whatever, right?
Dude, those 302 blocks are stupid now.
Man, they make big power.
Just to, you know, we're talking about Godzilla or coyote
for that.
Kevin's got a boosted coyote, it makes 1200.
And it's like 300 nothing cubic inches.
Like, if I got mad enough, I could just lift it up
with, you know, both hands and talk bad about it.
And when you blow up that production aluminum block,
I've got a iron coyote block that we did.
Again, crack block engineer.
And this thing is super stout.
The top horsepower build I've heard so far, I think,
was 2350 to the tires.
Did you hear that, Willie?
Did you hear that?
Did you see a dyno sheet?
In a tiny, tiny little small block.
Nobody has broken one of our iron coyote blocks yet.
So if you have any listeners out there.
The door.
You know, yes.
So and people think, well, I can just do my billet,
you know, aluminum block.
Sure, but it's four times the cost.
So, you know, have a nice day.
Yeah, so there's that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, which is nuts, man.
Wow.
All right.
Look, we're just touching the surface
that we already got to take a break.
So more with Mike here in just a minute.
If you're thinking crate engines,
really that's the way to go nowadays.
Because you could basically order the recipe
that you want for whatever application you're building.
And that's what's great.
More on that in just a minute.
It's two guys' garage podcast.
Kevin Byrd, Willie B. We're back after a break.
It is two guys' garage podcast.
He's Kevin Byrd.
I'm Willie B. And we have Mike Goodwin in.
Now, when it comes to all things Ford,
all things crate engines, look, I'll give credit.
What credit is due?
Ford is building some wicked stuff nowadays.
Whenever you ask anybody about what's
in Ford's hot plate right now, everybody's
leaning on this Godzilla engine.
We've had several people talk to us in podcasts
before about how much insane power they're
making out of this Godzilla engine.
Definitely something we've got to talk about.
And just the crate engine offerings, you know,
a lot of people, I'll say it nowadays,
with boost, with technology, with the ability to control
all your air fuels and timing spark all the technologies
out there, these crazy little 3.0 liter super chargers
on a Wipple supercharger on a small black Ford
is making just stupid power.
Dude, it is so much power that you just
got to laugh at all our efforts and all the hard work
we had back when we were in high school trying
to make 400, no 500 at the wheels.
It's laughable now.
It's laughable, man.
It's crazy.
I know 1,000 is the new 400.
We say it all the time, man.
So all right, it is a couple of just banging numbers
right off the bat, Mike.
So Godzilla had like a 1.0 and a 2.0?
Yeah, 1.0 is on sale right now.
That is, we call that the MegaZilla.
It is a naturally aspirated 612 horsepower 7.3.
We port and polish the heads.
We upgrade the cam.
We upgrade the pistons and rods.
Do you know the torque off the top of your head?
Because that thing is a torque monster, if I remember right.
Yeah, it makes over 500 foot pounds from, I think,
2,200 RPMs.
I was going to say like 8 RPM all the way up to a rev.
Yeah, you have all the way up to close to 6 grand.
So yeah, total torque monster.
The off-road truck guys love it.
Just a little NA motor making what, 6 something?
Yes, 612.
Yeah, 612.
600 plus.
Just way crazy.
And we're new at this game, right?
I mean, Godzilla is just kind of making its way out
into the, I'm sure there's more.
That'll be found over the years.
So what do we talk about on the Megazilla 2?
And this was an engine that we unveiled back
at the Ford Performance Season opener in North Carolina
right back the end of January.
And I've tasked the engineers with giving me four digits,
north of four digits, horsepower.
So right now, and we just fired it up.
Wait a minute.
I'm already tingling.
I mean, don't let me down here.
I'm on the edge.
I'm tingling.
No, we said at least 1,000, but the target is around 1,200.
And looking at some airflow and what the three-liter
Whipple can put out in that, I think it's really achievable.
We just fired it up on the dyno the other day
to do some initial break-ins and that.
So it's in development now.
It is in the dyno cell making it stable.
So we're not going to hold you to a number,
but you're thinking clearly over four digits.
Yeah, I'm going to push for 11 or 1,200.
And when the engineers see the podcast,
they'll probably slap me, but hey, that's OK.
No, they'll probably get inspired and go,
Mike, we've got you at 1,300.
I've got to push on those guys, so.
This is 7.3 liters.
So a 3.0-liter supercharger on that thing?
Yeah, we're looking at the three-liter Whipples
what's in the test cell right now.
So you're looking basically at, what, 444, 445
cubic inches somewhere in that ballpark out of this thing
and it's making 1,200 horsepower.
Think about that.
That's a target.
Right.
That's a target, Mike says, for your engineer guys
listening to the podcast in the future, which
means that you better get at least 1,250, 1,300,
or he's going to be pissed.
But look, the thing about that for a minute, guys,
you're talking 1,200, 1,300 out of a blown 445 cubic inches.
Remember the days when Ford had a 460?
Chevy had a 454?
Mopar had a 440?
All the same cubic inches.
But look at those engines just in A.
And look at all of them just struggling
to make 400 horsepower.
And now you've got all those combos.
And what's crazy is you can drive these things for days.
It's not like it's a massive cam with huge pressure
on the seats and valve angles and just
beating the valves to crap.
And this is an engine that until you step in it,
lean in it, it's pretty docile.
It's manageable.
It idles all nice and sweet.
And then when it's time to get down,
that thing dances, bro.
Straight dancing.
It's crazy.
That's kind of where I was headed in the beginning,
like as much of an engine guy and building and even designing
and all that's totally in my blood.
Dude, it's called 1,200, like you said, in a package all
wrapped with a bow with controls, just chill idling
with a warranty with no hassles whatsoever.
I didn't screw up anything.
I didn't have to get on dyno time.
The thing is hot tested.
I mean, dude, somebody could sit there and go, oh my god,
I could make five more horsepower than you.
It's like, who gives?
When you're making 1,200, dude, and you're dropping it
in your street machine, and you're
blowing the tires off at 90 miles an hour on the highway.
Yeah, which is what that does.
This thing is the tip, man.
Yeah.
A warranty.
A warranty, dude.
Nothing in my past life had a warranty on it.
It's insane.
It was just hold your breath.
Hope for the best.
There went something.
Got to pull it out this weekend, see what happened.
There was some fun in that.
Don't get me wrong, but I have warmed up.
As much as sometimes it kills me to just, like this guy
over here, just drop in a known badass entity
and do your little fun bits on the outside.
Right, right.
Yeah, I think we're in the golden age of crate engines
right now, when you look at the 7.3 platform.
And if you just need a 430 horsepower 7.3 crate engine
for your pick them up truck or your old Galaxy or whatever,
I have those too.
We sell that in the production form.
But we're in the golden age of crate engines now, right,
when you look at the 7.3.
Well, it's Baskin Robbins.
You got the 33 flavors.
You know, like I want the plain vanilla.
You know, like you said, I got my old Galaxy
and I just need a good whatever, 400 or 500.
Give me something economical or give me the bad mobile.
Right.
Mike, what is the bad?
What is the baddest girl you are building?
What's the somebody called you and said,
I want the baddest bits on the block.
What would you send them?
You know, they said, just tell me what the check is.
Or here's my music card and run it.
Send that thing to me.
What would you send them?
Right now, I would take your name
and number down for that Megazilla 2.0.
We have some other things in the hopper too, right?
The Mustang Coyote in supercharged form.
Yeah, we're talking baby, new tech.
Tell us what the baby, the little guy, the little itty-bitty.
What is the cubic inches on this thing, 280 something?
The Coyote is, well, it's like 302, 301, something like that.
We sell that base Coyote engine
and again, plug and play with the controller and all that.
We have a couple of different versions.
That's a 460 horsepower idea for the Gen 4X, right?
That's the single throttle body version that we cooked up.
You get the 480 horsepower version
with the twin throttle bodies.
But we're also working on selling the Coyote Crate engine
with a three liter blower on it.
So it's going to be your 800 and 10 horsepower idea
as a computer with a transmission,
with a torque converter, all that together, right?
We call that our power module.
So you don't have to get an engine from here
and a trans over here.
And we curate the package, so it's a one stop shop.
You add your plumbing, you add your fuel system,
drop it in away you go.
Oh, by the way, it will have a warranty.
So completely curated package.
You guys are like a horsepower concierge.
That's right, yeah.
Basically, it's wild.
All right, so the bad boy,
somebody were to ask you,
I want to mean this girl on the block,
how much power, how much money we talk?
I don't have my pricing nailed down yet
because we're still in development phase.
But again, that's going to be that 2.0.
That's 1,200-ish is the target,
at least 1,000, 1,200-ish.
Has somebody said I want 1,800, could you make it?
Sure.
Well, we could.
I think like you said, right?
So you're going to lay out the 33 flavors
and there's guys that are going to want double stacks
and the this and the that and go racing.
So, but a lot of your,
whether it's long blocks or short blocks, right?
They're primed for whatever boost.
Sure.
You want to put on them perhaps up to a limit, I'm sure.
Well, yeah, for the, in the Megazilla line, right?
We are going to release the short block
with the upgraded pistons and rods.
The steel crank in the 7.3 is very, very robust.
We're going to also offer it in a long block version
that will have all the good lower end bits
topped with our ported and polished 7.3 heads, right?
With the upgraded valve springs,
suitable for boost.
Or if you want to buy the whole shooting match,
you can do that.
Or if you wanted to go the other way
and start with a block to build up your own recipe,
you can do that too.
I have in the warehouse now a 7.3 block
without the saw cuts in the deck.
So it's going to be much stronger
than the production truck block, right?
In the production engines,
they put a little saw cut on the deck
in between the cylinders for cooling, right?
It's an extra cooling passage.
Well, we were able to get the engine plant
to build us a batch without that saw cut.
Stronger deck, stronger engine basis.
Nice, yep, better robust head gasket likely too.
And yep, for big, big pressures.
Exactly, yep.
Now, Mike, my years and years
in the trenches over there at Ford
and still being more on the R&D side,
but really tied in as much as possible
with all my buddies over there on your side of things.
My impression has always been,
you can always find a shop or race or whatever
that's trying to push the nth degree of power
and they can run something on a dyno
and say, man, I made this power number,
but the thing is probably on a ragged edge.
And some were in that whole recipe
or some weak links and who knows where they are
and somebody's gonna go find them.
And you might have a guy that's out there racing them
and finding them and fixing them and whatnot,
but you guys are typically trying to stay in that space
of, hey, man, everything we're gonna sell
is gonna go across not a dyno pool,
but enough to give us a warranty.
This is a combination that has no sweat beads
on the brow, right?
I'm not worried about, I could just go hammer this sucker
in my toy forever and ever kind of approach, right?
Sure.
You can drive across country, have a blast.
Sure.
Go on a power tour, go to, you know,
take your kids in the car and go to California
for the week, you know?
Take a vacation there and go have some fun.
Is that still kind of where you guys are landing
and like, let's push it all the way to the thing
is a legit, warrantiable, no worries kind of package?
Yeah, exactly.
And especially when you look at the Coyote line
where you have the curated package with the control pack,
which comes with the PCM, the drive-by wire throttle,
the Uegos, all the goodies to put that Coyote engine
in a shopping cart if you wanted to and make it run,
that calibration that comes in that control pack
is gonna deliver power and reliability
and more importantly, drivability too, right?
A lot of times you get a calibration that,
you know, granted there are a lot of good calibrators
out there but they're not OE level in terms of drivability
but the way our stuff is all curated
and put together that one-stop shop makes it easy
for the DIY guy wanting to do a Coyote swap.
All right, quick one on that
and we're running out of time here.
You ask any great calibrator
and every single one of them will tell you,
they cannot calibrate anywhere near
what the OE is gonna produce.
You can get a whole bunch of calibrators
that think they're smarter than the OEs
but all the good calibrators will know
that what's inside those plug and plays,
the level of refinement in there is beyond.
Now, yeah, you could go in there and turn knobs
and get more sparking, that's easy.
Any dumb person can do that
but to get the refinement
in all kind of driving conditions, right?
Cold starts and all that stuff,
you'll never get better than what the OEs can deliver.
And then from the ease, I mean, we've done it on our show,
I don't know how many different times,
pulled a crate engine in, right?
Modern electronics, it's so crazy complicated
and it's got like six wires
and you plug in some battery and this and that
and you're firing the engine up in like 30 minutes.
You know, like that's how fast you can turn around
a credit card bill to fire that thing up and ready to go.
There you go.
All right, cool.
Hey Mike, where can people find more
about the performance products?
Cause you got everything from crate engines to you name it,
rear ends and clutches and you name it.
Where can they go?
Performanceparts.ford.com
and you can also buy our products through all the,
you know, the speed shops, Summit,
Jags, American Muscle, you could even buy right
from our website if you wanted.
Lots of options out there to find our products.
Right on, man.
Hey, how much longer we got to go to years
before we get out of here?
It's to go to years now,
how much longer are we in it for?
Two years, three years, five, maybe longer.
What do you think?
If I have anything to say about it,
it's gonna be another 10 or 15 years.
Make it happen.
Make it happen.
At least.
I'm not done playing yet.
No doubt, man.
No doubt.
All right, check out our show.
It airs weekends on the Motor Trip Network.
Check your local listings.
Also available in Discovery Plus and Max.
Thanks to our producer,
senior producer Justin Carter,
executive producer Bob Becker.
He is Mike Goodwin.
And man, he loves to talk forward.
Hey, do you have any other engines
that you would give a nod to outside the Ford brand?
Would you give a nod?
Nope.
Chevrolet, would you give a nod to Himmys?
Would you give a nod to Nissan?
Like, what rattles your cage a little bit?
What do you think is a good engine
outside of your Ford realm?
Well, right now, I think the new
flat plane crank engine in the Corvette
is that they did a great job on that.
But I will say you got to have a Ford and a Ford.
No, there it is.
Got to have a Ford and a Ford.
That's right.
We'll coyote swap the Ford world or seven three
swap the Ford world and and keep it on.
Keep it on.
All right.
Good to hear.
Keep on our show.
Make sure you check that out.
That's right.
And check out our website, twoguysgarage.com,
our social everywhere at Two Guys Garage.
And this podcast, Two Guys Garage podcast
is copyright 2025.
Britain Productions Incorporated.
All rights reserved.
Well, Mike, I think you probably have
one of the awesomest jobs, very jealous.
I bet you just play engines all day and smell gas.
Yeah.
And yeah, it's it is pretty cool.
Like I tell people, I get to work with some really smart guys,
right, Mick, Simon, Ronnie, work, Tom Detloff,
you know, Scott Douglas, you know, Jeremy Holland.
We're a small but powerful.
That's a great crew right there, man.
Some boys. Absolutely.
Well, guys, I hope everybody had fun with us
talking about one of the coolest things on the planet,
engines and in great form and big power
numbers and the golden era.
So and they're never going away.
They're never going.
Keep your fingers crossed, everybody.
Never go away.
Just repeat it all day, all night long.
Dream about it.
And we'll catch you on the next Two Guys Garage podcast.
Two Guys Garage podcast is a production of Britain Productions.
For more episodes, visit I Heart Radio, Apple Podcast,
Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
About this episode
Ford’s crate-engine push takes center stage, with Kevin Byrd and Mike Goodwin debating why “plug-and-play” horsepower has eclipsed the old rite of building everything from scratch. They compare modern Ford Performance “heritage” pushrod engines—hot-tested, warranty-backed, and built with forged internals—to the pitfalls Kevin faced on his first DIY build. The conversation ramps into big numbers: the naturally aspirated MegaZilla 7.3 makes 612 hp, while a supercharged “Megazilla 2.0” targets 1,000–1,200 hp (and possibly more). They also cover curated Coyote power modules, OE-level calibration, and why warrantiable reliability matters as much as dyno sheets.
Kevin and Willie share their often humorous and always educational tales of first engine builds, setting the stage for a deep dive into the world of reliable power via crate engines. They tap into the expertise of Mike Goodwin from Ford Performance, who provides the inside track on their extensive crate engine lineup. From robust "heritage pushrod engines” to the mind-blowing "Megazilla 2.0" targeting 1200 horsepower, Ford Performance’s crate engines are making high-end and backyard builds even easier with warrantied plug-and-play power.
