FRANK EXCHANGE

DANDY Engines’ Frank Marchese was the man driving the dyno for the stage-one Harrop tests. The 2018 Drag Challenge winner and noted Blue Oval guru is excited by Ford’s new V8 platform.

“We ordered a Godzilla engine a few months ago for us to build,” he says. “They’re a great new platform for the Drag Challenge scene. We’ll be running one at Drag Challenge with a Harrop 2650i supercharger, and we want to see what it can do – not for an outright win, but as a fun, reliable and cost-effective combo. We want to come up with a combo that can go 9.5s or eights on the quarter but be easy to maintain and drive.

“We’ve had heaps of enquiries, and

I think it ticks the boxes for someone wanting to spend around $30,000, instead of working with a 50-year-old Cleveland that might split a bore or something,” he continues. “The bottom end is better so far than anything else we’ve seen in the past few years from a factory engine. Plus it’s got all the good stuff to make a 1000hp car reliable, like a factory crank trigger set-up and a modern coil-based ignition system.

“They’re a new platform, so some of the parts can be expensive to order right now, especially working out the front drive and sump options, but there aren’t too many tricks to them.

“There’s an electric motor that controls the oil system, but with the Fueltech ECU we can control that and the variable cam timing, so that opens up cam-swap options as well. We’re going to tear one down and do pistons, rods and some work with the variable cam timing.”