Ford’s 5.0-liter Coyote engine has proven remarkably durable, even more so as the platform has evolved and FoMoCo has continued to add better internal components over the years. But the Gen I engine (2011-’14 vintage) wasn’t nearly as robust in factory form as the Gen 2 and Gen 3 engines, each of which have been proven to generate high-three and four-digit horsepower figures along with single-digit quarter-mile times when tuned properly with nary a whimper. Tyler Hassing and his team at Force Engineering in Plainwell, Michigan, have centered their efforts around the Gen I Coyote engine platform and recently turned it up to 11, capturing the stock-engine record by blasting off to an insane 8.59 at 155 mph during a recent test session on what Hassing calls a conservative tuneup.

Solid, controlled launches from this beautiful turbocharged Grabber Blue machine.

But that’s not all. Unlike many shops that say, “here’s what we ran and here’s a short video of the action,” Hassing went so far as to offer up the datalogs of what happened during the track day and provide analysis of what happened during the run, what he’s looking for, and how he plans to make changes moving forward to further develop the car’s performance with the stock engine base.

Hassing believes the car is making somewhere around 1,500 horsepower at the flywheel based on the fuel injector duty cycle. For these passes, Hassing pulled the interior and employed several other weight-removal techniques, but as the car is truly a street car, he says he plans to replace those items and turn the car down a bit to keep it alive.

It is interesting to note that Hassing broke the record even with ignition issues; as we can see from this datalog graph, the RPM dropped substantially after the shift to Third gear, and he sees a ton of noise in this signal, which will be fixed and help the car to run even quicker.

The basic build relies on a built Turbo 400 transmission to transfer the power and a turbo system built in-house at Force Engineering using a unique 180-degree header. Two cylinders from each bank feed into one collector, and the remaining four cylinders feed the other collector before feeding the turbo. You can see the details of how Hassing built the turbo system in the video below of the build. The engine is completely stock (the heads have never even been off), but it does have a set of oil pump gears for safety’s sake.

Check out that wild turbo system!

He also remanufactured an inexpensive sheetmetal manifold to incorporate an air-to-water intercooler system and improve performance for a reasonable cost, but it helps that the Force Engineering shop can turn out this type of work along with full engine builds, fabrication, and other automotive-related tasks. To see what the team started with — a naturally aspirated ride with hardly any mods — and that they’ve ended up taking the stock Gen I Coyote engine further than any other racer before them is a testament to thoughtfully considered modifications, and a lot of fun for us to watch!