Crazy Boat Engine Makes 1400 Horsepower With No Boost At All

Last year we reported on an engine that no one in the auto community really knew about. It was an engine created by Mercury Marine and it’s totally batshit insane. You can read all about it right here. That article is by far and away the most popular in the brief history of Shifting Lanes. We think this one might match it.

Turns out that the entire boating industry is churning out massive, insanely powerful engines all the damn time. And they continue to use the LS block to do so. The most recent Frankensteinian engine comes to us from Performance Design, which handled this particular powerplant’s engineering.

This is strong engine pornography. Very NSFW.

According to enginelabs.com, the LS based, V16 engine is capable of making between 1200 and 1400 horsepower without boost. Yes you read that correctly, WITHOUT boost. Can I get a “holy shit!”?

The foundation for this 14-liter marine powerplant is a patent-pending M16 cylinder block that supports four production-style LS3 or LS7 cylinder heads along with separate conventional intake manifolds.

Unlike many other V12 or V16 engine projects that weld two cylinder blocks and two sets of cylinder heads together, engineers from Sixteen Power designed a bespoke single-piece cast cylinder block constructed from A356-T6 aluminum–which has more desirable material properties than 319 alloy often used in OEM engines. The block is spread between the front eight and back eight cylinders so that two sets of 6-bolt LS cylinder heads can be installed without modification.

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Seriously, the engineering behind this thing is absolutely staggering.

The block is tooled for a premium low-pressure aluminum casting process that yields higher tensile properties than most aluminum blocks. There is a separate ladderframe-style crankcase assembly that supports the 10 main caps and provides a rigid bottom-end structure.

The engine is designed to run in powerboats up to 55 feet long. However, I’m willing to bet there are some auto shops out there willing to throw this monster into a car. Who’s up for the job?

(Source: Enginelabs)