Ford’s 7.3-liter “Godzilla” V8 is breaking out into the wild and coming soon to a track near you.

At a time when practically every new production engine sports double overhead camshafts, turbochargers, hybrid technology, and aluminum everything, Ford Motor Company zigged when everyone else zagged.
In 2020, Ford released its new 7.3-liter “Godzilla” V8 for its Super Duty line of trucks. The engine was designed as a replacement for the SOHC 6.8-liter Triton V10 that had been available in large Ford vehicles since 1997. For those who didn’t want or need a diesel powerplant, the 7.3L (445 cubic inches) was the new, large-displacement, gasoline-powered V8 alternative.
But rather than follow the pattern of increasing complexity and fashionable technology that has dictated engine design in recent years, the Godzilla V8 arrived like some throwback from an earlier time. Besides plentiful cubic inches, the 7.3 features overhead valves, pushrods, a camshaft located in its traditional spot in a cast iron block, and a forged steel crankshaft.
Even more important for the motorsports and hot rodding audience, Ford Performance almost immediately made the engine available as a crate engine. In crate form, the Godzilla V8 is factory rated at 430 horsepower and 475 lb.-ft. of torque. “The Ford crowd finally has a modern pushrod engine at their disposal,” said Cale Risinger of Melling, Jackson, Michigan.

Making Fans

Whether from a slow rollout due to pandemic supply chain challenges, or just the newness of the engine, the Godzilla 7.3 hasn’t made serious inroads in professional racing classes. That’s steadily changing, but in the meantime, the street/strip market and engine swap crowd have embraced the engine with both arms, according to our sources.
“The racing guys aren’t totally sold on it from the performance aspect, just due to the lack of experience with them. They have no history with the 7.3 yet,” said Todd Warren of Apocalypse Performance, Mason, Ohio. “Some people are scared to get into them because the weak points are unknown at this time. But the engine swap community is big on them—people getting rid of the old 460s, some of them even getting rid of diesels in some of the older trucks.”
Apocalypse Performance has a Facebook group dedicated to the 7.3, and enthusiasm for the engine is reflected by the 12,000 members. “Most of them, I would say, are just going into older trucks,” Warren explained. “We have a Facebook group that caters to the 7.3 and swaps, and the vast majority are going into older F-150s, F-250s, stuff like that.

“As far as what we sell, most of it’s the swap parts, the stuff to delete the oil coolers, cooling passage block-off parts, and some other stuff that the guys doing swaps aren’t using. The majority of people here are just doing crate engine swaps into older stuff, like Fox body [1979–1993] Mustangs. A couple of guys have put them in Fairmonts, which is pretty cool,” Warren added.
At Holley in Bowling Green, Kentucky, the appeal of the Godzilla to owners of older Mustangs has also been apparent. “You see a lot of use in Fox-body Mustangs,” said Dave Bellm. “That’s kind of the bread-and-butter Godzilla swap application, a Fox Mustang or maybe an SN-95 Mustang. That said, if it will fit in there, it will fit in just about anything that could reasonably accommodate a V8.”
One factor in the Godzilla’s popularity is its size. It offers big block displacement, but in a configuration that’s not much larger than a small block Ford 351 Windsor V8 and is quite a bit smaller than Ford’s big block FE-series and 429/460 engines. Ford’s current mainstream performance engine, the “Coyote” 5.0-liter V8 found in the Mustang GT and F-150s, is a respected engine in the performance world. But its wide double-overhead-cam dimensions make it a tough swap for many applications.
“The Godzilla is smaller than a Coyote from the width standpoint,” Warren said. “It’s taller, but from the width standpoint, for guys putting them into cars, there’s a huge benefit. You can actually work on the engine when it’s installed. For the average hot rodder, the guy who’s going to work on his own car, that’s a huge benefit. It fits into the older cars, the older Mustangs, a lot better than a Coyote. You don’t have to pull out your shock towers to put a Godzilla in.”
Indy Power Products of Indianapolis, Indiana, currently specializes in 7.3 Godzilla engine components. Jim Ryder sees the engine being widely swapped into older cars, with many destined for both street action and track days. “We’re seeing a lot of engine swaps being done with it,” Ryder observed. “You’ll see the aftermarket Cobra guys doing the replicas, they use it quite a bit. They’re now looking at putting it in the GT-40 replicas as well as the Shelby Daytona Coupes. Lincolns, Mustangs, early Broncos, late Broncos, it’s just a nice engine swap package.”
Yet the 7.3 Godzilla V8 is not tiny. From the factory, the crate engine is tall enough that much of the aftermarket’s initial focus has been on parts that trim dimensions to maximize the number of vehicles that can accept it. The primary issues are a deep oil pan and associated oiling system, tall intake manifold with an upturned throttle body, and a wide accessory drive.

Packaging the Godzilla for engine swaps has been a priority for Holley. In the past year, Holley has released a high mount accessory drive that allows for flexible configurations, and an oiling system that uses a high-capacity gerotor pump positioned behind the timing cover to gain crossmember and ground clearance, along with an external access port for easier switching of the pressure spring. Holley’s aluminum Godzilla intake manifold offers a lower profile and downturned throttle body angle for additional clearance, plus support for cable-driven or drive-by-wire throttle bodies. Holley’s combination of parts can even allow the use of the factory hood in applications such as the Fox Mustang.
“Once you can get the oil pan shortened up on it, get the accessories pulled in, and then get a manifold low enough, then this thing can go into all kinds of stuff without too much trouble,” Bellm said.

One of the main aspects of the 7.3 Godzilla engine that has attracted aftermarket attention is the oiling system, for both ease of engine swapping and performance reasons. “We had an engine just about as the pandemic hit. We tore it apart and said, ‘What are we going to do here?’” Ryder recalled. “I wanted to jump right on cams and performance, but then I looked at the oiling system and realized it was going to be a packaging issue for a lot of the applications.
“It’s really neat how Ford did the stock oiling system with the oil pump located in the sump of the pan and the shaft going back to drive the oil pump, and variable displacement,” Ryder added. “It’s really a nice package for the F-250s and F-350s and trucks, but it just won’t package in a lot of applications. So that’s where we jumped in. We said, ‘Well, there’s going to be the first opportunity, let’s replace that oiling system with something we can package.’ That’s where you see one of our two oiling system solutions, a front-mounted gerotor pump that we came up with. That allows you to put a front sump or rear sump pan on there. We’ve got a special pan for the Cobra kit cars, and you can do custom pans as well with our system.
“Our newest system uses the stock, production oil pump and relocates the pick-up to some parts that we make for the back of the stock oil pump,” Ryder continued. “We can take 2 inches out of that rear sump pan. Our newer system uses the stock oil pump, rear sump only, and it has a built-in pressure relief valve into the pump. It actually then brings the oil inlet and outlet to the same side of the engine.”

Deep Breathing

A crate engine is often seen by enthusiasts as a starting point, and so the performance aftermarket has wasted little time in discovering what the Godzilla engine responds to, and what it needs to support higher outputs.
“The biggest, the first thing, is the camshaft,” Ryder said. “You can keep the production valve springs and do a camshaft change and pick up over 100 hp. If you pull it out of the crate and put it on a dyno, it’s going to read 500 hp. Advertised in the truck, with the exhaust and air cleaner in place and everything, the SAE spec is lower. But if you go to any engine shop and put the crate engine on a dyno, it’s going to read right around 500. You do that cam change with a stock intake and everything and you’re over 600 hp.”

Melling announced in January three new camshafts for the 7.3, with power gains of 50–100 hp depending on the cam. “The Godzilla has fairly good cylinder heads from the factory, which makes a cam swap one of the easiest ways to add power,” said  Risinger. “The three cams that Melling is offering are aimed at the street rod, street/strip, and drag race only crowd. The factory cam is an assembled cam; the Melling cams are all machined from one-piece billet cores.”
Recently introduced forced induction options for the 7.3, such as ProCharger’s centrifugal supercharger and Whipple’s twin screw supercharger, have also allowed racers to reach next-level horsepower. “The drag race guys have really taken to it, especially with the readily available superchargers now, and turbochargers,” Ryder explained. “The drag racers just love it. You take one of these engines and put a turbo or throw a supercharger on it, and you’re over 1,000 hp. We’re seeing a lot of drag race applications.”
As the aftermarket, racers, and hot rodders continue to find ways to build power with the Godzilla, strengthening the engine for endurance has taken on added importance. “We developed some billet main caps. That was seen as a potential weak point,” observed Apocalypse Performance’s Warren. “We haven’t seen anybody break a main cap, but the stock main cap just isn’t up to par with those in the higher horsepower engines.”
Warren said he has seen failures with the stock timing set in high-rpm, high-horsepower applications. “A good double roller timing set would go a long way with this engine,” he noted.
Ford Performance has also raised the bar with its own “Megazilla” crate engine. Megazilla comes factory rated at 612 hp and 670 lb.-ft. of torque thanks to a Ford Performance intake manifold, 92-mm throttle body, CNC-ported cylinder heads, high-performance camshaft, MAHLE forged pistons, Callies H-beam forged connecting rods, and other tweaks. According to our sources, Megazilla sightings have been scarce on the ground. Whether that’s from the newness of the package or the Megazilla’s nearly $23,000 price tag is hard to pinpoint. For now, racers have discovered that they can vault their Godzilla engines to Megazilla levels of power using the latest batch of aftermarket parts.

“The longer the engine is around, the more people are coming out with stuff,” Warren said. “Getting better intake manifolds, getting better cam profiles, valvetrains, everything. We worked with Jesel when they produced their adjustable rocker arms for it. It’s all coming around.”
Looking ahead, the racing community should expect many more Godzilla sightings. “I think the market is still so young for that engine that I think we’re going to see it going a lot of different directions now that there’s stuff out there to make it more of a viable swap,” Bellm said. “Before, it was something you really had to want to do pretty badly. You had to be that pioneering type who is willing to sort out problems and figure things out. There’s a big thread of that that runs through hot rodding and racing, of course. But if they can just bolt stuff in and make it easy, that’s even better.”

SOURCES

Apocalypse Performance
apocalypseperformance.com
Callies Performance Products
callies.com
Holley
holley.com
Indy Power Products
indypowerproducts.com
MAHLE
mahle-aftermarket.com
Melling
melling.com