External belt driven cam shaft and external cam driven oil pump are utilized. The cylinder heads are aluminum Blue Thunders. SVO 540 had them built with Chevy exhaust ports for both improved flow and availability of exhaust headers. The headers are stainless steel Lightning’s with 2.25” primaries and 4.5” collector. The intake manifold is a high rise tunnel ram style. With the Ford distributor in the front of the motor additional clearance was necessary and the tunnel ram style intake manifold was necessary. John Fagan aka J540 on the boards, built the intercooler that sits under the 15% overdriven Littlefield 1471 Supercharger. The Enderie bug catcher injector is the throttle body for the Autronic’s EFI system. It has an 8:1 compression ratio and with 11 pounds of boost made 1050 HP on the GT Performance dyno. The motor is set up now making 15 pounds of boost which of course requires Avgas. SVO 540 estimates the motor makes 1100 HP.
El Diablo started with a 2” shorter IMCO SC outdrive that broke on a few occasions and when IMCO came out with the SCX drive SVO 540 converted to the SCX upper and SC lower. At first SVO 540 didn’t like the boat handling with the SCX upper so he took it to GT Performance and had them cut the SCX cavitation plate down to the same size as the SC plate and problem solved. The SCX upper has been trouble free and with the additional strength came the option to start running five blade propellers. The drive hangs off the back of an IMCO stand-off box, has the tall 1.25 gear ratio set and spins a lab finished 30 pitch five blade Mercury prop.
SVO 540 estimates the top speed to be around 130MPH with perfect conditions, gear out of the boat, low fuel and just the driver. The 120MPH speedo in El Diablo can find the pegged line. "For sure the boat has been over 120MPH" SVO 540 states. The best top speeds are with a lab finished 30 pitch four blade spinning the motor in the 6,000 to 6,200 RPM range. The five blade prop is not quite as fast on the top end but is more efficient producing much less slip running under 4,500 RPM. In fact, running 3,000 RPM the 30 pitch 5 blade is about 7 to 10 MPH faster than the 30 pitch four blade at the same 3,000 RPM. SVO 540 states the only problem with the five blade is the boat goes too fast idling through the channel and he either has to drop it in and out of gear or just make the pass. The motor has a low 750 in gear RPM idle too. The five blade is the main propeller on El Diablo which is what we were running this day.