Kelly Racing has completed the build of its first in-house Ford V8 engine ahead of the 2020 Supercars season.
As part of its move from Nissan hardware to a pair of Ford Mustangs the team opted to continue with an in-house engine programme, rather than leasing or buying as a customer.
Initially using an ex-Stone Brothers Racing Ford engine as a base, the KR engine shop has been developing its own five-litre unit over the off-season.
That project has now hit a major milestone, with the first motor – KR001 – now complete and ready to hit the dyno.
The engine features a number of unique components manufactured at KR’s Melbourne base, included the billet aluminium sump, water pump, intake manifold, pulley systems and air box.
“It’s a massive step in this whole Mustang transition process to have completed our very first Kelly Racing-spec Ford engine,” said team boss Todd Kelly.
“It’s been a massive job, starting with the ex-Stone Brothers engine, rebuilding that a few different times to test parts as they became available, spending hundreds of hours manufacturing and designing our own parts, running the machine shop 24/7 for the last few weeks, but we got there.
“We’re proud of what we’ve achieved in only a fifteen-week period, everyone involved in this project has put in a huge amount of effort to get us to this point and I’m extremely grateful to all of the people who have made this possible.
“While we’ve done a lot on this project ourselves, we’ve had the support and products from a few of our partners with Castrol providing all of the fluids, ACL with the bearings and Gates with the belts on the engine.
“Having reliable products like these really gave us peace of mind during this whole process and we thank them for that.”
Once tested on the KR dyno the first engine will be shipped to the Supercars technical department in Queensland to check that it meets category regulations.
It will then be rebuilt and fitted to a car before the pre-season test at The Bend in a fortnight.
Kelly Racing KR001 Ford V8 engine
Photo by: Kelly Racing
Related video
Source: Read Full Article