2011 Ford F-150
It's not going to be easy to suasion truck buyers that they can have all the power, performance, and durability of a V-8 with just six cylinders, but that's th missionin front of Ford with its new 3.5-liter V-6 EcoBoost engine for the new F-150. Maybe you've seen the firsthire purchase of Ford's torture test campaign, rolled out as a multipart Internet short-form documentary with the "Dirty Jobs" guy, Mike Rowe, highlighting all the tests Ford put the new engine through in six months.
2011 Ford F-150 EcoBoost
The plan goes something like this: Pull an 3.5L EcoBoost off the line at random; run it on a shock-test dyno for the equivalent of 150,000 miles; drop that engine into a 2011 Red Candy Metallic SuperCrew XLT 4x4; send it deep into the Oregon forests to do heavy-duty log pulling; then have it do some more 24-hour torture testing pulling a heavy load at acelebrity raceway; then take the vehicle back to Davis Dam for some more towing with a few competitors; then finally yam the engine out of the F-150 and put into a competitive desert racetruck to run the Baja 1000. And then engineers will tear it down to see what kind of wear they find. So far, the engine has performed the perfect, without a single hiccup, but the torture is far from over. In fact, it's quite easy to identify this exact engine's ID number along the way. It's prominently displayed at the front of the right cylinder head as #448AA.
2011 Ford F-150 Engine
2011 Ford F-150 Engine
