I was at the dealer today and met a man with a 550.

ANY car can be made to have 750hp, with enough money invested.

 

bart get in that seat before melbourne so you can tell us if he is bu$%shi&ing or not. I find it hard to believe 750hp at the wheels. this means 975hp at the fly wheel. that is insane.
rock on

 

the question is 750 at the wheels????? not overall

 

why not. 750 at wheels is like under 1000 at crank.
with enough money, i can get you 1200.

 

Scud,
Knock 15% off the 750HP
The US Dyno Jets read 15% higher than Dyno Dynamics.
Therefore 638 HP in our terms.

It still sounds like good flywheel HP doesn't it......

 

True, but it was very difficult and expensive to get 750hp out of my 74 AMC Matador.

 

fair point but he has turned it into a drag car. not the sort of thing enzo would approve of.
rock on

 

Since I think the LeMans prepped 550's have only 660 hp, my guess would be he had the cylinders bored for larger displacement... ???

 

Le Mans cars have to suck through restrictors, which holds power right down. A road car with a race 6 litre engine could quite easily have 750 BHP normally aspirated using pump fuel, with no restrictors. Would be a wild thing.

 

rene got a 550!

 

i think the dude was BSing you. You would need alot of work to get a car up to 750 rwhp N/A, even if it's a V12. The 550 V12 is 550CI right? Or 5.5L? Anywho in the V8 world a 427 (7.0L) can make about 550hp with a small cam and such, but without getting a full blown race engine it would be hard to get an N/A 750rwhp engine that was still streetable. The V12 would have to be cammed like a mother #$%^er, not to mention ever other bolt on done, and head and piston work to get 750. I really doubt he was telling you the truth.

 

well, it's reasonable to expect that anyone looking for much more than 500 horsies is gonna be doing some pretty significant stuff to just about every system in their powertrain yeah?

what are 'restrictors', and what's their purpose?

 

Basically a plate between the fuel delivery system (carb or FI) and the intake manifold, that has a hole of a specific size, which "restricts" the air/fuel mixture, and reduces power. It's a way of tuning different engines to be cometetive with each other, in order to create parity on race day.

 

Bart - this is the car, right??
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

* GASP *

 

750hp, NO BUDGET, NO PROBLEM. 1st thing: get it stroked. Get a forging, get another 1/4" of stroke into it. Pistons won't fit, no problem, get a new set of Titanium rods, 1/8 shorter, no problem. Bore it as big as you can. You've not got yourself a 7 liter motor. Heads don't flow enough. Take them off, weld them up, cut new, better ports, put in bigger values, cut the stem on the intake so that it doesn't interfer with the flow. Modify the injection to make sure that they flow enough, match the manifolds to the ports, and you're off and runnin.

When you get the pistons made, get them with only two rings. Gas seal them, so that you can control the oil burn.

Guess what: You've got 1000hp, not 750. Amazing what money can get done.

Cost of the above: at least 50k, probably more like 75k. Motor isn't going to last very long either, but so what, you've got the fastest 550 around. Now you've got to revise the transmission, suspension, get bigger rear tires on the car, make sure that you don't get too much axle tramp on take off, yep, another 50k to get the suspension right.

Art

 

What he said, or for a couple of grand go nitrous. Either way it can be done.

 

I'm sorry, but I think you guys are on crack. Peak horsepower is currently made at over 7000rpm. I believe you can get to 650hp out of the 550 at the crank, without going totally berserk, but that would still entail serious head work, new cams and at least 8000rpm.
The race motor is 6L already, not 5.5 and realistically is worth 700-750hp without restrictors, with new cams etc. Have any of you looked at peak HP RPM on the race motor? From memory it is producing peak power from 6000rpm with a very flat torque curve. It is not a screamer at all and appears to be engineered from the ground up with the restrictors in mind. So just pulling the restrictors out is not going to produce a 750hp ground pounding monster motor.
Stroking the motor will only make it lazier, not what is needed for these sort of power numbers, a bigger bore and lots more revs are what's really required. I'm not going to waste my time doing the maths, but you could guess on a rev limit somewhere south of 9000rpm required to get over 750hp at the crank, let alone rear wheels without forced induction. Use an older Chev 350 race motor as an example, which is approximately the same capacity. Back in the 80's these motors were turning upto 10K to get these sort of numbers and saw duty in drag cars. How much power does a 3.6L NGT motor produce and at what revs? Up the capacity to 6L redo the equation and what have you got? Omigosh works out to about 750 crank horsepower!
That's without factoring the additional frictional losses in the larger 12 cylinder motor.
On the other hand, with forced induction, 750hp at the wheels would be a walk in the park.
So respectfully, I call BS on this one.

 

i had the same crate in my old X.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

As much as it hurts to say it, Lamborghini's V12 has had variable cam timing for a while now, so I'm surprisd Ferrari have not applied it to theirs, although with the drama the 360 has had with it, maybe it's a good thing.

The lambo engine is a heavy old clunker though, so it's good that a 550 still only weighs a genuine 1700kg or less all up wet.

 

That sounds like its way too high tech for Lambo's Capabilities.The higher the level of technology,the lower their reliability goes.And when they do break,just try to get parts.and if you think that Ferrari parts are expensive,brother,you dont know what expensive is until you have experienced Lamborghini induced heart failure.Stick with Ferrari if you wanna play with overpriced Italian toys.

 

Usually I'd agree with you, but having raced against a Diablo GTR and SVR for 4 years now, the engines are bomb proof on them. Seriously, it was 3 seasons before they even pulled the head off a race engine, while 360's popped like cheap light bulbs in a desk lamp.