Remember that Supercharged V8 Gen 3 SHO…?
A while back, I posted an article extoling the virtues of the third-generation, Yamaha V8-powered 32v SHO Taurus. Included later in the article was a picture of an SHO engine bay, showing off a shiny supercharger install that I nabbed off of Cardomain. Well, the owner of the car (Carter Fujibayashi) left a comment on the article about how he had updated the engine and sent a more recent motor shot. I decided to head back over to Cardomain to check out Carter’s SHO, and it’s such a trick setup I felt the need to share some more details on it with all of you. Here’s the old engine shot from Carter’s SHO:
And here’s how it looks now:
this setup is really impressive, and I’ve always been a sucker for modifying cars with virtually no aftermarket support. (I’m weird. I dream of SR20-powered mid-eighties Isuzu Impulses, and 500whp Volvo 850’s. Take that as you may.)
The supercharger is based on a Vortech kit, pushing 12psi. Since I last saw this car, it’s been converted to an air-to-water intercooler (which is just trick as trick can get). It has a 90mm Mass Airflow Sensor from an SVT Lightning, 36# injectors from a Cobra, a Walbro 255lph auxiliary fuel pump, Throttle Body coolant bypass, and it’s all controlled by an SCT XCalibrator piggyback tuned by Doug Lewis of FPS in Atlanta.
It’s also equipped with SVT Cobra rotors and calipers (13″!), lowered suspension and a thicker rear sway bar, as well as some visual enhancements and non-ironic Yamaha badging.
The only dyno numbers available are on a horsepower-to-wheelspeed scale, which isn’t especially useful, but it peaks over 300whp around 80mph, which means this would make for a simply viscous car from a highway roll around 70mph or so. Yow. Check out that power spike:
The best quarter mile times Carter has reported so far has been a 13.03@98 miles an hour. The low trap speed relative to the fast ET is due to applying the brakes before the end to avoid breaking out and getting redlighted. Ahh, win some, lose some! Still, that’s mighty quick.
13-second Taurus, heck yeah
So, my hat’s off to you, Carter: that is one cool Taurus! Those are words that are rarely spoken! You should be proud!
December 24th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Thank you so very much for the props. You pretty much hit the nail on the head with all the mods and reasons I did them (they said “you can’t do that to this car”). It is a pleasure and very fun to drive even though the car currently has 193,000+ miles on her. Still get out to the track at least a couple times a year to stretch her legs and burn off a good set of tires (currently Bluestreak Stilletos). Always surprises the unsuspecting ricer and pretty much all the mullet-driving F-body’s when a roll-on from 30 leaves them looking at the back end of a Taurus in the distnace.