Sunday, March 13, 2011

Ludwig, The Mad 2.8 Lives!


I have been working on this 2.8 liter short-stroke project for about 2 years now.  It is built on a rare early Turbo aluminum case with a 66mm counterweighted crank and 95mm pistons and cylinders.  Compression is about 10.5:1.  The MFI throtle bodies and stacks have been bored over-sized by Aaron Burnham at Rennwerks Inc in California.  The twin plug dist is from Aaron as well.  Nice piece!
I had John Truman @ JTE Racing Engines (440-298-3858) in Cleveland Ohio assemble the engine and have had it sitting in my garage for nearly a year while I got all of the ancillaries worked out in the car (twin MSD boxes & harnesses for example).  I love the sound of the genuine R /ST exhaust, but I am afraid that it will probably be too loud for the amount of driving that I do. 
This little clip shows the engine shortly after I fired it for the first time. There are still some details to complete and some tuning to be done, but I am very happy with how it takes the throttle - the responsiveness is exciting. It should motivate my '70 S quite well!