Engine Power Throwback: ‘Barely Legal’ Coyote-Swapped Fox-Body On Engine Power

We were diggin’ into the Engine Power archives to bring you this gem – the ‘Barely Legal’ Fox-body Mustang. This little red Mustang started life as a 2.3L Fox-body and ended up in the EP shop and received the treatment with subframe connectors, heavy road race suspension on all four corners, an 8.8 rear end attached to a beefy torque arm, lower control arms, and a Panhard bar. To help halt this pony, they added big Cobra brakes. Let’s not forget the powerplant – a modern Ford Racing Aluminator crate engine in the form of a Coyote 5.0L V8. They changed up the ugly exterior with a 3M wrap by Jamie Mullican, owner of WrapArtist.

Before the Coyote 5.0L crate engine was in the car, it was placed on the engine dyno. Here it made an actual rating of 451 horsepower, which is decent considering that its factory rating was 412 horses. Eric Brooks from Brooks Speed came in to work some HP Tuners tuning magic on the little Fox-body. A baseline needs to be established before any tuning magic can be done, so the Fox-body was strapped to the dyno to see just what the car was putting down. According to the dyno numbers, it shelled out 394 horsepower and 365 max torque. Mike made the dyno pulls in fourth gear which is 1:1 ratio for the Magnum transmission from 2,800 RPM to the rev limiter. Messing with cam timing and a few little tweaks, the Fox-body squeezed out 405 horses and 385 torque.