What makes an Enzo Engine special?

for a few thousand miles, sure. ZR1 powertrain carries a 100,000 mile warranty!

 

So I wonder how a new box stock LS7 Corvette would fair against an old box stock 355 out on a technical road course. Stock tires, brakes and exhaust too.

 

Well, with me driving, a Zo6 will run circles around the 355. But it is a similar comparison to a ZR1 and an Enzo. I really couldn't care if the ZR1 is faster, it is no contest!

 

Good point. I am not too technically inclined, but I will say that I have noticed this trait shared among modern American muscle-type car engines. The 4.6L engine from a Mustang Cobra is incredibly receptive to minor modding, and I have heard similar things about the engine from a Ford GT (a 5.4L, IIRC). This may be because of the supercharging (pullies/induction/exhaust mods are relatively small), but nevertheless.

Other engines like this are found among the Jap cars...the 2JZGTE from the Supra and the SR20 series from Nissan both are highly receptive to relatively small mods for big power.

I have never noticed this trait among Ferrari engines. I mean, I've seen kits and such for 600 horse 360's and such, but the old Supras and even the new Cobras can handle 800-1000 horsepower pretty easily. Can anyone answer as to why? Or is this simply because most people don't tamper?

Rumor has it Mr. Losee will be attempting 1000 horse out of his Enzo engine...Perhaps there is something special about it.

 

those engines where made 20+ years ago.

Don't get me wrong, I love FI engines but its incredibly easy to get a lot of power out of them by just boosting the **** out of them. Some might argue then that some engines will become unreliable and they would, if the builder/driver doesnt know exactly what he's doing or the mapping is wrong.

The thing about a ZR1 engine that i find so unimpressive is that it needs a mega big engine (6.2 liters compared to the enzo's 6.0) and a supercharger running at 10.5 psi to get to 640hp, which doesn't even beat the enzo's 650...(I know power isn't everything)

I'm not knocking the concept of the ZR1 but I don't find the technology used particularly impressive or anything, its fairly ancient. That said, from what i've seen of the ZR1 its a great drivers car.

 

The thing is, most people don't tamper with particular engines because they're hugely expensive when they blow up. SR20's, 2JZ's are fairly cheap to replace, $3/4K when it all goes tits up. Rods are fairly cheap ($600-1K for a set), same for pistons. Why don't we see many big power NSX's? the engines cost $25K to replace, and many tuners don't even bother to get silly power out of them because they know they need to test first, which will cost a lot of cash (when the engines blows for example) and they know not many people want their NSX to have 600+ hp, or even 1000. Most go the save supercharger route and stick with 400HP.

Same for Ferrari's. What would a 360 engine cost to replace? 50K? 75K? I dont know, but it'll be expensive for sure...Its not really worth it for a tuner to go completely balls out with tuning the engine just to prove that the 360 engine could possibly make 1500HP with a GT47 turbo and 30PSI of boost. why do it if no one will buy it?

 

You are absolutely correct. I appreciate your plan.

 

I do stand corrected. I don't know why I was mentally picturing the F50 when I was talking about the Enzo. The Enzo is rubber mounted. The F50 is like the 333 with the motor bolted to the body/chassis.

 

you make it sound like they couldn't figure out how to make the ZR1 run 600HP N/A, which isn't the case. They *designed it* to run the way it does. Instead of being impressed with the enzo's 6.0 displacement, you should be impressed with the ZR1's 6.2 engine cost, not to mention durability. there is no way you are going to get 100,000 miles out of the enzo engine.

 

The cost of an Enzo engine and its price are two very different things. The price is highly inflated due to its name badge. I would bet its cost if in large scale production would not be terribly unreasonable, more than a ZR1 but still not unreasonable.

As for its longevity I see no reason for one to not be capable of 100,000 miles. You have to remember, an Enzo will almost never be driven in such a way as to promote longevity but if driven as a normal car I would be surprised if it did not top 100,000 by a considerable amount.

 

Hmmm. GM needs a blower to get 600 HP from a 6.2 liter, Ferrari only needs 6 liters to make 651 HP naturally aspirated. Nothing special about a Ferrari engine at all.

 

it's actually pretty obvious how to get more power -- flow more air and rev it out higher. choose stroke length and redline based on your budget and maintenance schedule targets. "back in the day" this was harder, today it's not difficult. what's not obvious is how to reduce weight.

EDIT: BTW, in no way am I saying the enzo engine is not extremely impressive! what i really want to say is that the GM is at least on a par for engineering impressiveness, albeit for different reasons.

 

Seems I recall reading somewhere in one of my books that Ferrari basically did a 2/3 reduction on their 12 cylinder engine when crafting up the 308 series. Makes sense, fewer resources used and less wasted parts.
Also resulted in ~ 2/3 the horsepower of the 12 cylinder(depending upon which set of lies; err, 'statistics' one reads).

Jives with what Brian is mentioning.

 

I would generally agree, however, you gotta admit that it's likely ferrari has a slight edge over GM when it comes to very high revving and quite highly stressed/tuned engines. After all, all that F1 success comes from somewhere.

I would totally agree with you that the GM 6.2 out of the latest ZR1 is a heck of an engine, particularly considering the dramatically lower pricing. That's way, way more bang for the buck than ferrari is putting into the enzo engine. Plus, as you also point out, the GM 6.2 is going to be a helluva lot more reliable and durable over the long haul. Let's face it, GM wasn't trying to create the highest specific output engine, rather, an engine that can be put into a daily driver and give lots of years and miles of low cost and reliable performance. That's not something the enzo could every claim and without a doubt that's one of its major shortcomings.

I'll take the GM engine over the enzo, and take some joy in being able to head over to NAPA and get a full tune up kit for a couple hundred dollars....

 

I believe the article was in Road and Track and the title was something like "What is the best V8 sports car engine". They tested the F430, the Audi R8, the Astin Martin whatever and the standard Corvette. The answer was - GM LS3. Now in all fairness, the LS3 isn't even the flagship motor, the LS7 is (probably the best motor GM has ever made). They picked the F430 as the best sportscar and the most fun to drive however they said that the LS3 pulled harder out of the corners and kept pulling to redline. The F430 was the only close competitor. The other cars couldn't keep up.

 

Regarding engine weight:

I don't have an Enzo engine but weighed my 575 engine which must be pretty similar:

215kg (473lbs) when fitted with Jenvey TBIs and all ancillaries except exhausts, ie installed weight including an iron power steering pump. This engine dyno'd at 601bhp with absolutely standard internals. We think most of the power increase came from better exhaust manifolds.

 

When I was 15 I owned a GTO with a 421HO, 4 spd, and a 6.13 posi. There isnt much in the world today, or then that would compete, up to 80 mph. Against almost any Corvette it would kill it. Same with any Ferrari except some F1 cars. Now I add the obligatory blah blah blah. Its all meaningless. Might as well compare a P-38 to the Concorde, or a Honda 50 to a 400 Kawi. If your not comparing apples to apples, whats the point?

Ferrari and virtually all of europe took a different path through the last half of the 20th century. While America built ever larger crude cast iron overhead valve V-8's that produced very low power outputs per cubic inch, europe was going the other direction. Europe invented the DOHC head, 4 valves per cylinder, etc., and set about extracting the maximum amount of HP from the smallest volume.

Someone wanted to compare physical size. Once again, the Ferrari is large because it has GIANT cooling passages around the cylinders. Ferrari have huge twin cam heads. Saying the GM engine is simular size to a 355 engine is just silly, if the 355 had as scrawny of cooling capacity and low tech OHV rocker arm heads, it would be a tiny engine.

So while the GM guys will brag thier Vette has more torque out of the hole than a 355, well, it better, its TWICE THE SIZE engine. When you go racing thay dont go by physical size, they go by cubic capacity. If you want to go by physical size, put a 6-71 onto a Mazda rotary. You could stuff that lil engine into a lil car, and cream everything in sight, including big bad Vettes.

The Enzo engine is impressive because it makes a very high power per cubic unit, and can produce that power for a long lifetime. The Corvette motor is impressive as far as how much gross power and torque it produces, as was my GTO. But both fail against the intelligence and archetecture of Ferrari. 500 HP from a 427 isnt really that impressive, we got more than that out of them 40 years ago, and truth be told, thats only 72 HP per liter. My 30 year old 308 makes more than that.

 

Back to the ORIGINAL question...

As to what makes it a better "Street" power plant is subject to vast and diverse religous-style arguments.

Technical Features of the Enzo motor would certainly include:

Continously Variable Intake and Exhuast Timing
Continously Variable Intake Geometry
Titanium Connecting Rods
Dry Sump Lubrication, with 3 (or is it 4?) scavenge points
Billet forged crankshaft
VERY lightweight design via minimal casting (common in many aluminum engines now)
(I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting at the moment)

It marked the first use of the all-new Ferrari/Maserati joint engine design in a Ferarri and it is the first V-12 to come from that project. I was told by a very reliable source that the same designer of the sucessful F1 V-10's had a direct hand in spec'ing this series of engines (Enzo, MC12, F430 and all new Maserati V-8's).

 

We all otta get this straight... When Enzo left Ford at the alter and pissed them off in 1963 (re: ownership) Ford developed a car that whipped that italian "hobbyist" at his own game for 3 years straight. Make no mistake, when it matters to the Americans, they win and they always will. My 355's are my passion and a vette is... just a vette but the americans could if they wanted make a car with the excentricities of any european car. Chances are it would be more reliable.

My .02