You could just bolt a conical...
You could just bolt a conical air filter to the end of the mass air-or you can do what we did. This is the Power Surge Performance Fast Air Induction System, and it's a great way to improve the airflow into the engine/blower allowing for more boost/power. Copious amounts of air now pass where the stock setup only allowed a trickle. The sound of this thing uncorked is music to the ears!
We admit to not writing much about trucks here at 5.0&SF, but we made an exception for the amazing Ford SVT Lightning. We wanted to present a concise story about the history and background on this vehicle, so we gave Sal a list of questions that we thought our readers might like to know the answers to. As expected, Sal's knowledge on these big performance vehicles was complete and dead-on.
Sal: I have always been a Ford fanatic. I got my first car-a '66 Mustang-at 15 years old, and I have owned over 50 Fords since. Then, in the mid-'90s, I was struck by Lightning-I instantly fell in love with the truck and lost all interest in the other vehicles I owned at the time, one of which was a Pro Street, 520ci, tubbed '69 Cougar. I have been obsessed with Lightnings ever since.
My obsession drove me to create a club for other Lightning fanatics with whom I could share my joy of these trucks. So in 1996 I founded the National Lightning Owners Club. The club united Lightning owners all over the country, in the common goal of sharing information and having fun with our trucks. The club is presently run by a new owner, but it is still the number-one place to be for Lightning owners.
I am also a former Ford technician, certified in engine performance, EEC diagnostics, electrical, and all areas of automotive repair. I am a master fabri-cator and have done many one-off custom vehicle builds.
My present company, Power Surge Performance, specializes in all aspects of first- and second-generation Lightning performance and custom tuning. We are the oldest and most well-known Lightning performance specialists, and we currently own the country's fastest Gen 2 Lightning. Through the years, we have sponsored many Lightning-related events, such as WFC, NMRA, Mod Shootout, Fords at Englishtown, and some local events. I always try to stay as connected to the owners as I possibly can.
5.0&SF: Who were the people at Ford SVT who brought about the Lightning project?
Sal: The funny thing about that question is that SVT actually had nothing to do with the Lightning's creation. The Lightning project was the handiwork of the Ford Truck Team, back before SVT even existed. One of the key people on the team was my good friend Gary Siegel. Gary was the powertrain program management engineer on the Lightning project. The following is his account of how the Lightning came to be.
Gary: In mid 1990, Ford Truck Management decided that Ford needed to come up with a vehicle to improve its image in the personal-use pickup market segment. Ford was still clearly the leader in the work-truck segment, but it was losing personal-use sales to Chevy, which had the 454 SS performance truck. One of the key ideas that came out of the first meeting was that Ford wanted to create a "complete" high-performance vehicle and not just a "straight-line, go-fast" pickup. It was something that had never really been attempted before, as far as Ford knew. The 5.8 was selected because it could perform near the level of the 454 SS and was still light enough to allow handling improvements. Amazingly, the Light-ning went into production in only 22 months-something that had never been achieved with a modern vehicle design up to that time.
Despite the compressed timing and small budget the Truck Team had to work with, when all the final designs were put together the vehicle worked even better than anyone had hoped. The truck could maintain 0.9g lateral skidpad, with spikes over 1.0g-better than most sports cars of the era, at any price. The truck also featured more than 23 new innovations never used on the F-series before, and many of them made their way onto regular F-series trucks after the Lightning.
Car Engineering was working on the '93 Mustang Cobra at the time, and a management decision was made that the new SVT division would market the two vehicles together to give the world the impression that Ford had an in-house performance shop (SVT) that worked with both cars and trucks in the hopes of polishing Ford's personal-use market image. Since that time, Ford Special Vehicle Engineering has overseen the engineering on SVT vehicles, with some of the work outsourced to companies such as Roush.