Originally posted by stilov:
not being sarcastic or anything...but why is it a hell of an engine?

lots and expensive maintenance
can't find parts
obviously it's old (and probably somewhat outdated)
it doesn't make "that" much power

What is it?

PS I have had an SHO and I am going to look at one today.



Yes, they are loosing their sparkle as they age. I guess that is to be expected. Parts get hard to find on anything as they get older too.

But in their day it made a lot of power. They took a lot of abuse. It was reasonably easy to get more power from them.

However, they do have their limitations. Even though Yamaha furnished the block, it was still basically based on the Vulcan 3.0 V6. It did not have enough bell housing room for a decent clutch. Ford eventually had their vendor design and build an odball sized clutch that fits the SHO only to get one as big as possible. That helped, but the clutch remained one of their weak points.

It was sometimes hard to find someone that truly understood the engine when you needed work. You needed someone with either Volvo or motorcycle experience to adjust valves due to the shim in a bucket design.

It was truly a great engine overal that was searching for a better platform. Think what it would have been like in a Probe.

Jim Johnson 98 SVT 03 Escape Limited