Our friends over at Steve Morris Engines have been burning up the dyno lately with builds for all different types of customers; recently we’ve covered a number of their engines that twist the dyno to big numbers, and today we’ve got this sweet big-block Chevrolet engine that’s slated for dual duty.

The engine belongs to customer Ronnie Hobbs, who approached SME with a goal of 1,500 horsepower. Perhaps the best part? Hobbs plans on installing the engine into the ’57 Corvette formerly campaigned by none other than Rod Saboury in the heyday of Pro Street.

Photo Courtesy: Steve Morris Engines

Notable is the fact that the engine does not make use of an intercooler, which is rather surprising when using a large supercharger like the F-2 ProCharger that’s on board. The supercharger has been slowed down from where Morris would typically set it up, in an effort to provide the best engine for the customer’s goals.

“When the customer reached out to us, we listened to his goals with the car (mostly a show car, but run 1/8th-mile once in awhile) and decided on this particular build. The chassis is not certified to go below a 5.00, so no need to make crazy horsepower. We did, however, setup the engine to easily accept more power via an intercooler and/or larger ProCharger in the future,” says SME’s Alex Esnaola. This engine is capable of up to 2,100 horsepower as it is, but has been de-tuned for this particular application.

As shown on the dyno graph, the engine has an extremely flat torque curve – from 3,500 rpm to approximately 6,800 rpm, it never falls below 1,000 lb-ft over the entire dyno pull and even breathes on the 1,300 lb-ft mark. Horsepower tops out well over the 1,600 threshold easily; Morris has it dialed back by removing timing and adding in some fuel for safety in the upper portions of the RPM range.

According to Esnaola, “The engine Ronnie will receive had our proven combination of hard parts to make some good steam. The custom BRODIX cylinder heads feature our custom CNC porting and other cooling system modifications as well. This engine features our unique billet intake manifold as well as our custom billet valve covers. We have incorporated our custom billet crank trigger sensor bracket and our CNC cam sync plate. This engine also features a coil-near-plug ignition system.”

This is yet another in a long line of powerful ProCharged engines SME has put together; we’ll be back with more in the future as Esnaola has tipped us off to another monster build they are working on that will debut shortly.