Sounds like you need to step back and do more research. There are several ways to do this on a budget and easily meet your goals. You are over complicating it IMO.

Your goals, power figures, weights etc all seem “off” to me.

Road racing isn’t economical, period. Assuming nothing breaks, I’d spend 4x what I spend on my drag toys in a season racing an NA 4 cylinder GT3 car.
With a road race car of any sort you want reliability. Keeping a turbo charged engine reliable isn’t economical IMO. I’m a turbo nut, but I don’t “road race” them because I can’t afford it. I use an NA 4 cyl for that to keep things cheap, simple, light weight, and reliable.


Which fox? Should be able to get a notch down to 2500lbs without alot of effort. I have a full interior (with tons of dynamat) 93 notch with heavy aftermarket seats (heavier than stock). OEM fuel tank and a twin turbo LC9 in it. It’s 2800lbs on the nose (no driver). That’s with a TH400.

Look at the sloppy mechanics “wiki” page or search youtube. Look up the procedure for decapping injectors. Your factory 5.3 injectors can be decapped for free. This usually doubles the rated flow. With NA setups you can also bump the base pressures way up and squeak out more power if needed. De-capping paired with a walbro intank 450-500lph pump will allow you to run E85 cheaply and easily. (factory fuel lines and all) Plenty of fuel for your goals using factory injectors. E85 is usually good for a 2-3% power bump alone with a proper tune. And you can run up to 13:1 compression on it.

Wanting torque instant and low in the rev range isn’t practical or necessary in any kind of racing. No competitive race car is setup like this. Light switch power at those RPM’s will only cause issues with traction and upset the car through turns. You want the RPM up and a nice progressive peaky HP ramp with a flat “lowish” torque curve compared to HP. Competitive road race setups are usually above 5k the entire time they race. The larger the engine the more wear/tear. It’s just more mass slinging around at RPM and not necessary for your goals.

Keep the light weight 5.3. A cam only LC9 with the compression bumped up will easily meet or exceed your goals. With E85 as your fuel, you can run base compression all the way up to 13:1 if you wanted. I’d send the small chamber heads out for a “mill and fill”. They will add weld to the factory chambers to bump compression and mill off .030 or so. I was quoted $300 for this procedure. It allows you to retain the factory pistons and get a VERY healthy bump in power/compression.

A 12-13:1 5.3 with a cam and $99 china headers will make 550+ crank and be the cheapest, simplest, and most reliable IMO. It will be much more responsive than turbo combo and produce half the heat. Grab an oil accumulator, oil cooler, and overdo the coolant system. Should be set. The engine is the easy part. Focus less on that and more on your chassis and keeping weight low and centered. Good set of tires will make more of a difference than anything in my experience.

 

100%, a weekend or two of road racing costs about as much as a season of drag racing. Track fees are more, you stay longer, use more fuel, tires gone, brakes gone, usually something else broken, etc.. Even racing old VW's it adds up, I cant imagine trying to race a turbo V8 and have it stay together at all on a budget. I tried a turbo 6cyl once and it was laughable, NA 4cyl car was slower down the straight but faster around the track.

 

How any car will last at anything depends how hard you push it, and how well it is maintained and built.

If anything, a turbo V8 should be far easier to be reliable, simply as it will be far less stressed for any given power output vs a smaller engine of the same.

You don't need to be a lunatic to go to any event and have fun, and it doesnt need to cost a fortune either.

 

It’s a TON more heat build-up, more weight, and harder to deal with in general IMO. Quick ¼ mile blasts vs 10-15 minutes of straight racing at a short track are night and day. You must have a better laid out setup with much more attention to heat management for turbo setups. Which equals money...

 

Heat is weighed in tons ?

Piece of ****. Thousands of turbo cars do all sorts of racing, endurance racing etc etc. It's only difficult if you make it difficult. There isnt an infinite increase in heat, and you always have plenty of airflow to get rid of any heat, nor are you WOT/max power for the entire duration of a track race.

And a V8 naturally making more power to stat with, will require less boost and develop less heat than say a 4cyl making the same power and be under much less stress etc

The biggest mistake most seem to make with heat, is for some reason far too many want to try and trap the heat in, turning everything into cookers and burning **** up.
They need to allow that heat to escape ! Not trap it in.

 

Yup big ol’ SAE Butt-tons of heat!

Check average annual racer expenses on a Turbo V8 car and class, then the NA 4 cyl car and class and get back with us.

 

I raced a TT 95 Mustang in NASA for a few races. It wasn't terrible. Brakes were the biggest issue.

 

Why would you even try and make a comparison of two totally different types of engine, power ranges etc etc ? The two are not in any way comparable.

If you're comparing costs of a 700hp turbo V8 to a 700hp turbo 4cyl...that would make more sense

 

The comparison is the cost of racing each type. Discussion was about an economical road race car. My point is a V8 (LS or otherwise) won’t be “economical” or practical in most classes. Add a “budget” turbo setup in the mix and it’s even worse.

If someone is on a shoe string budget and worried about dropping a few hundred dollars on a turbo or injectors... Entering a more affordable class might be a better option.

Add years of experience and a big budget in the mix and sure it's very possible and would be even more fun IMO. Just trying to be realistic for the budget minded entry level folks.

 

Every new post improves my perspective so keep it coming. A few clarificiations:
My project car is an 86 Ford SVO. I already have subframe connectors ready and am in the planning process for installing a Crown Vic watts 8.8 rear. I'd like to keep the stock dual exhaust. Even with 500HP output, the stock exhaust resistance is not likely to exceed 80miilibar. The stock car weighs ~3150 wet so when you add the Crown Vic rear and other required parts, my <3500lb. with driver number is not just in the ballpark, it's on the pitchers mound


The cheapo tips here are priceless but by my analysis, a stock 6.2L LS is still the best bang for the buck. I also considered mechanical upgrades to the LC9; it's cheaper to get the bigger NA. Kudos to those that pointed me in that direction. Is NA exactly what I want? No. As previously mentioned, I lose a functional boost gauge and fuel/boost switch on my dashboard. Also, the 517ft-lbs. of torque is above my comfort zone for the Tremec T5WC. I am very smooth on a manual but that kind of torque is asking for trouble. The points about managing boost coming on hard are inarguable but in my opinion, those issues are also there with the 6.2L if you don't mind the throttle. Is it worse to have a relatively abrupt elevation in torque at a lower level than a smooth climb to a higher one? I don't know but I feel more confident with the former case. It just depends on how abrupt that change needs to be. With <8lbs. of boost, I suspect I'm right but I definitely don't know I am. The additional costs of bumping up the LC9 are the turbo, the ECU/controller pair, waste gate/b.o.v. (if the existing ones can't be made useful) and any custom fitting/routing. I think the throttle body and manifolds of the LC9 should be usable so I'm assuming a budget of <$1500 because I have friends to weld for me.


Everything else I've looked at also requires injector upgrades, coil over plugs and a bunch of other things that hit the money pain threshold. I even considered the LCV and LKW Ecotecs. The only engines I haven't explored are HCCI and turbo diesel. A friend has suggested a small diesel would suit my stock T3-60/48 to a "T" and probably be 100lbs lighter than an LS but I would have to run it at 25lbs. of boost to get my power goal by his estimate. I have no experience with diesels so I can't affirm his claim that high boost is not nearly as complicated with diesel. I would appreciate all your thoughts on that option.

 

Grab an L92, swap in any budget long tube header and a stock LS3 intake, mild cam/spring combo, and you're in the 500 HP/450 ft-lbs range for $3500-4000

 

@JoeNova
Why do that when I can get an LS7, L86, LT1, LS3 or LSX376 and just stick it in? If I'm going to spend K's, I don't expect to have dead gauges on my dashboard

 

Cost. All of those are going to cost you anywhere from 2 to 5 times what a good used L92 will run you

 

You lose a functional boost gauge.


Oh **** the sky might hit you on the head. End the thread now before any more of this bullshit. Or send him to kingtalon.

 

For that budget just get a basic prepped Miata, Honda, VW, etc and learn to drive it, be a better long term investment. Sell it for the same price you bought it for when you're ready to move up. I got my ITB class car for about $2500, replace tires and brakes as needed. That will teach you how to drive before you go out there ham fisted with 500whp and stuff it in the wall as I have seen multiple people do.

 

What is the “budget” ? That word means something different to each of us.

If you are getting a cam/spring combo anyway... You can hit his goal and more with 5.3 for much less $. Why go for a L92?

In my first post there is a link where they made 467 crank on a 5.3 with a cam/TB/ and header swap. That’s already over your goal for less than half the cost. Add E85 and healthy bump in compression and I don’t see why it couldn’t make 500+. Which would also mean more power at lower RPM where you appear to want it.

 

@Forcefed86
A sensible point you've made there.

Not in my case, I live in an area with lots of wrecks and contacts that can point me to what I want.

That was an overly emotional reaction to a pet peeve. Wouldn't it bother you to have gauges that don't work?

When I budget, the car hardware is less than a quarter of what I'm spending. That's no reason overspend there. The larger parts are all the other things that are involved and yes, it's an expensive hobby but the adrenaline rush makes it worth it. I'm too old now to keep putting my knees 3" off the tarmac so a car is going to have to do

 

The OP is kind of full of **** , first he wants a small frame t3 fast spooling turbo and then says a S480 fits the bill???? Then he's worried that if goes N/A , he can't use his boost gauge that doesn't even make sense to me . And he plans on using a T5 behind a healthy V8 with decent torque for racing , I thought it was common knowledge that those things break even if you look at them wrong.

 

@Lsx Rubi
Yes, my desires are changing because they're being shaped by what I'm learning in this thread. What did you add with your post other than antagonism?

The LC9 in an early generation Miata would be formidable on a track but it fails my purpose for street use. Where would I put my skis?

 

Right... because those are all so popular and easy to find in wrecks. You're going to find an LS7 or LSX in a wreck somewhere local?

After the constant back and forth confusion due to clear lack of understanding and knowledge, I've already written this all off as total crap.
The swap either won't happen, or you'll make a complete disaster of it.