Sport Aviation Exclusive

FALCONER V-12 Heart of the Thunder Mustang BY BUDD DAVISSON

The latest version of the Falconer V-12 ... mit kompressor. With the Vortech supercharger mounted below the aft end of the engine, the V-12 produces nearly 1,200 sustainable horsepower. Dan Denney says this is now the preferred engine for his Thunder Mustang builders. Dan's goal is to have Dave Morss racing with this engine at Reno '99, in both the Sport and Unlimited classes.

o many people, a good portion of the P-51 Mustang's appeal is the visceral sound track which supports its obvious good looks. Long before the Brits exported music, a la the Beatles, to our shores, they had exported a much earlier musical instrument named the Rolls Royce Merlin. The sound of it cackling along on the taxiway or its high altitude siren song is guaranteed to light any pilot's adrenaline wick. And so it is with the

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66 APRIL 1999

Falconer V-12 which supplies the sound track for Dan Denney's Thunder Mustang. Denney apparently decided early on it wasn't good enough to look like a Mustang, it had to sound like one too. Scale airplanes need scale sound. Enter Ryan Falconer ( E A A 505438) of Ryan Falconer Industries, Inc. in Salinas, California. Falconer had exhibited his then-new V-12 engine at the 1990 SEMA (Specialty Equipment Manufacturer's

Association) Show in Las Vegas, where it was lined up with every kind of aftermarket go-fast, look-great goody in automobildom. A picture of it appeared shortly thereafter in a trade magazine which Denney happened to see. Falconer says he got a call from Dan and it sounded as if he'd made up his mind to use the V-12 rather than a Chevy big block in his as-yet unfinished Mustang kit, even before he got off the phone. Until Falconer met Denney, he did-

as an aviation market for his 600

pound, 600 horsepower (1,100 horses with a supercharger and some tweaking), all aluminum V-12. It didn't take him long to find out however. The V-12 is simply the last step in a career that has always been centered

on making horsepower. Always more horsepower. Ryan Falconer has been the quintessential California hotrodder since he was fourteen years old. Born and raised in Santa Monica, California, he started by building up Cadillac V-8's for his brother's '47 fastback Cadillac drag ear which did quite well in its class. Falconer's big break, however, came in 1961 when he went to work b u i l d i n g engines for the legendary (iranatelli brothers. The Granatellis were already legends at Indianapolis and 21-year-old Ryan Falconer found himself working as a machinist building Novi V-8's that went on to race at the brickyard. While there, he was taken under the wing of Gene Marsnac whom he says expanded his understanding of engines many fold. The Novis were two valve, three m a i n , supercharged engines which were putting out 850 hp. From the (iranatellis, Kyan went to work for another legend-in-the-making, Carroll Shelby. They were building the first 289 Cobras and Falconer was heavily involved in the race engines, as opposed to the much tamer engines being put in the street Cobras, which were wild enough as it was.

Ryan Falconer [EAA 505438]

Realizing the little 289 e.i. Ford had a lot of potential past that which Shelby was asking for, Falconer began doing more exotic, more powerful engines in his spare time for other racers which didn't sit well with Shelby. As Falconer tells it, Shelby came in and

asked, "What should we do about this?" and Falconer's answer was two fold, first, "I think I ought to quit." The

second half of his answer was to set up

his own engine building shop. So, at 25 years of age, he started Ryan Falconer Racing Engines, Inc., which continues today. The three decades leading up to the V-12 included some interesting and noteworthy accomplishments, such as working alongside Tndy legend George Bignotti on the 4 cam Fords w h i c h powered Jackie Stewart's and Graham Hill's Indy race cars. It was one of those

Really serious racing parts — V-12 cam, Bryant crankshafts, Carrillo rods, piston and Falconer rocker arms. SPORT AVIATION 67

engines in Hill's car that, in 1966, gave

Ryan his first Indianapolis win. The '70s and '80s were full of exc i t i n g racing programs, including providing power for five teams at Indianapolis at the same time. Pretty soon he had names like Unser (big and little Al), Jones and Andretti driving under Falconer power. He built engines for the Unser/Galles and Donohue/Penske teams and his was the first V-6 (Chevy) to run and finish at Indy. His growing reputation on the race track led to a relationship with General Motors in which he would do outside consulting as well as developing race engines as test beds for future production parts. For instance, the V-6's they prepared and raced in the GTP class were developed into engines used in many of GM's production cars. Then three years ago Ryan Falconer Racing Engines prepared and ran SB2 small blocks in a racing truck series to prove the engine which would became a NASCAR standard. It was this kind of background which Ryan Falconer Racing Engines brought to the development of the Falconer V-12 we now hear roaring around in the Thunder Mustang. The V-12 project started in 1989 during conversations with one of Falconer's engine buddies, the late Dave Zeuchel of Merlin engine b u i l d i n g fame. Zeuchel and Falconer talked about a possible replacement for the Merlin and Zeuchel suggested mating

Dual Kevlar™ serpentine belts drive the engine accessories. 68 APRIL 1999

two Falconer V-6's together. Ryan countered with the suggestion he build a V-12 from scratch. At the time, the market he envisioned was the offshore boat racing market which was quickly gobbling up big block Chevys. (Note: Merlins and Allisons were used in the Unlimited Hydroplanes.) Not one to simply "talk" motors, Falconer immediately formed Ryan

Falconer Industries, Inc. built a proofof-concept engine. Of course, just saying that he immediately built a proof-of-concept engine glosses over about a million details that go into building an engine of any kind, most of which are unfathomable to many of us. However, satisfied with the prototype, Falconer began letting contracts for production castings and one year,

Obviously the crank is very well supported in the Falconer V-12... with beautiful machining.

"To invent an

airplane is nothing. To build one is something. To fly is everything." Otto Lilienthal. pioneer aircraft builder

Owned by Tommy Rose, this is the second Falconar V-12 powered Papa 51 Thunder Mustang to fly. four days later the first production version ran on the dyno. The engine hasn't changed dramatically in the decade since it first ran although subsequent uses of it have made subtle refinements. Wanting a relatively simple, but efficient engine, Falconer's design was for a push-rod engine rather than an overhead cam configuration, which kept the parts count down and the overall dimensions smaller. He selected a 90° layout, rather than a 60° partially because the height is much less but also because it gives more room for the direct port fuel injection manifolding between the banks and the manifolding can be snuggled down closer to the engine. The 600 cubic inch engine (4.125" bore, 3.75" stroke), as it now stands, weighs in at 500 pounds dry, with an all-up weight of 700 pounds complete and ready to run with the Dan Denney 2.8:1 reduction unit (two spur gears, spray bar oiled). Normally it puts out

600 horses but that can easily be increased to 1,150 hp ... which the engine will put out that they plan to race at Reno this year. Considering that the engine is only about a third the size of a Merlin, in displacement, and

it is pushing a much smaller airplane, their estimates of 400 mph around the pylons may be conservative. The engine's construction is, on one hand, very conventional, but at the same time includes some interesting concepts. The block, cast by ECK Industries of Wisconsin, is A356 aluminum alloy. The block and heads then are machined at Schwartz Machine in Detroit. All the other castings are finish-machined in Falconer's sprawling facility in Salinas. The block features an unusual design concept in the manner in which the crankshaft is retained. Although not unique to this engine (the Cadillac Northstar reportedly uses the same concept), the seven (!) four-bolt main caps look as if they have been incorporated into a large casting the size of the entire bottom of the engine that is rim-bolted to the block in addition to the usual main cap bolts (see Photo 5). However, another way to look at the construction is to visualize it as if the block continues down, well past the crankshaft, and is then split horizontally through the crankshaft center. Either way, the result is that the bottom end of the engine is much more

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rigid than it would be if each of the main caps was a separate piece, as in most engines. The lower casting is capped off with a tiny oil pan that is

actually just a scavenging collector for the dry sump oil system. The heads, also all aluminum, are relatively conventional appearing, twovalve per cylinder units. One difference is that the valves are splayed out rather than being parallel. This mounts each valve at an angle in the combustion chamber which unshrouds them and gives optimum air flow and combustion. The valves arc operated by rocker arms of Falconer design and manufactured specifically for the application. Every other part of the engine, like the Carrillo rods and the Bryant crankshaft, are high end, race proven aftermarket pieces or units designed and built by Falconer. All of the accessories are mounted horizontally on the rear of the engine where they are driven by a pair of one inch wide, Kevlar serpentine belts, which Falconer says are designed for much more horsepower than they are getting. Also, the engine has to turn 71/2 revolutions before the belts travel 70 APRIL 1999

even one time around the accessories. The ignition system consists of three sets of Delco direct-fire coils per bank which are fired by dual crank

triggers. There is a single plug, per cylinder. This system, along with everything else in the engine is controlled by a pair of redundant, Motec ECU units specifically programmed for whatever application the engine will be used in. In the case of the Thunder Mustang, the computer is set up for the parameters which are unique to the aviation environment. The beauty of the Motec ECU, besides being a tiny package not much bigger than a wide, paperback book, however, is that

it can be hooked to a lap-top computer and either diagnosed or reprogrammed. It also has a memory built into it, so the lap top can reproduce everything the engine did, including its operating altitude, for the last 59 minutes. (It should be noted here that use of the two ECUs allows the engine to run EITHER the right or left bank independently, allowing for an emergency "limp home" mode.) The firing sequence, incidentally, appears unusual until explained. Going

down one side, the engine fires in a traditional 120° sequence but when the firing changes cylinder bank, the interval is 30°. When it again changes cylinder bank, the interval is then 90°, which gives you a sequence of 30°, 90°, 30°, 90°, etc. Almost as soon as Ryan had the engine in production, he began look-

ing for places to put it, as the airplane connection hadn't yet been made. Their first entry into offshore boat racing was cut short when, after tasting success, they were ruled illegal because they hadn't yet built enough engines to be homologated into the class. This, however, has recently

changed, so that market will now be open to him. One of the more interesting applications was a program they had going with GM for a limited edition, 4WD Suburban. Using their basic 600 hp engine, the idea was to build a short run of 1,000 cars to be sold to discriminating buyers. At 600± horsepower, that would make something interesting for the wife to use for grocery runs! The program died after two prototype vehicles were built because of internal GM management issues.

At the time the prototype Thunder Mustang was involved in an accident, the engine had performed flawlessly for over 500 hours and wasn't a contributing factor to the accident. This lends a level of credibility to the design of the engine. Now that the engine is proving itself. Falconer is receiving calls from a wide range of clients both in and out ol' aviation circles, but he is routing all aviation related calls to Dan Denney, letting him take care of the homebuilt sales. Falconer also says, however, that they are investigating the ag-plane market which could use any of his engines up to, and including, the supercharged 1,000 plus horsepower version. The Falconer engine is a gorgeous looking piece of work that completes the image Dan Denney was striving for with the Thunder Mustang. Equally as important it is not only proving itself reliable and powerful, but it sounds soooo good! For further information contact either Dan Denney at Papa 51 Ltd. Co., 208/466-5204 or Ryan Falconer Industries, 1370 Unit B, Burton Ave, Salinas, CA 93901 (831/758-8434, Fax 831/758-2870, e-mail: falconer @falconerengines.com). ^

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