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Just about any car with its hood open will garner my attention, at least enough for me to poke my head into the engine bay. During our PRI weekend this past December, I came across a Mustang in the Frankenstein Engine Dynamics booth that had me circling the car a few times. That’s because this was no ordinary Mustang – it was a 50th Anniversary Cobra Jet with a turbocharged 5.0L Coyote engine.
I circled the car enough times for Martin Martinez, the owner of the car and a shop named Junior Performance, to come over and tell me more about the Mustang and its built-up Coyote engine. I quickly learned this car comes from Mexico, and it’s one of the fastest Mustangs around.
“It’s a real 50th Anniversary Cobra Jet that we took over to Mexico,” Martinez explained. “We had fun with the Ford Racing stuff, but we wanted to go faster. That’s when we kind of went and did our own twist to it.”
The Mustang’s 5.0L Coyote engine features a Gen I RGR short block with Frankenstein Gen I ported heads and oversized valves. The engine also has Frankenstein’s billet manifold for the Cobra Jet platform and the engine runs a Precision Pro Mod 88mm turbo. The Coyote runs on alcohol and everything is controlled by a Haltech ECU. Plus, the engine is mated to a Turbo 400 transmission.
“The combination definitely makes some pretty big power up top,” Martinez told us. “The platform is designed to take up to 50-lbs. of boost. So far, we’ve only turned it up to 27-lbs. of boost, so we really haven’t seen its full potential. As it is from Mexico, most of the racing we do is No Prep, so it’s never really seen a full prep track. Hopefully, this first quarter [of 2024] we make some hits in America with a little bit more pounds of boost.”
As the car sits now, Martin says they don’t plan to do much else to it in its current configuration, but will continue to test and tweak things as they crank up the “heat” so-to-speak. Down the line, the goal is to keep pushing the limits, and a new Coyote build could be in the works.
“We’ve been working with a company called RPG Engines out of California – he has an idea of what to do for the next step – because we are looking to push the limits and go as fast as we can,” Martinez says. “It’s one of the fastest S550s in Mexico so far and we want to continue to keep that title down there. Right now, the racing scene in Mexico is booming. Everyone’s making crazy power down there and we’ve got to be a step ahead, at least.”
As the Cobra Jet sits now, the Coyote engine is capable of nearly 1,700 horsepower, and Martin expects the engine to be able to improve to 2,500 horsepower with some new tweaks.
“We’re considering a stroker Coyote build, which a lot of people don’t do on a turbo application,” he says. “We like to experiment, and we might step up to a 102mm turbo. We want to see what the 88mm turbo can do, but we do plan on going to a bigger cubic inch, bigger turbo, bigger fuel system – we’ll see what we can come up with.”
While the Mustang runs mostly No Prep events, Martin says the Cobra Jet sees eighth-mile ETs in the low 5s, and quarter-mile ETs in the 7s.
“It’s been pretty successful for what we want to do with it,” he says. “We’re not really trying to chase a time. We would like to see some bottom 4s. We just want to keep up with the cars that are coming out now. Even though these cars only see 7,000 DA, because we race up in the mountains in central Mexico, there’s cars that are still running 4.40s-4.50s and we’ve got to keep up with these because we do enter the all-out Outlaw classes and the Run Whatcha Brung classes, so we’re talking about Pro Mods and cars making 3,000 horsepower. We want to compete with those guys as well. Whatever it takes to be up there, we’re going to make the changes.”
For as cool as this 50th Anniversary Mustang Cobra Jet is already, we can’t wait to see what Martin and Junior Performance do to push the needle even further.
Engine of the Week is sponsored by PennGrade1, Elring – Das Original and NPW Companies. If you have an engine you’d like to highlight in this series, please email Engine Builder Editor Greg Jones at [email protected].
