Best mechanic ever: Ohio man tunes Ford Mustang to produce 400 horsepower and return 110 mpg

With gas prices setting record highs nearly every day, many Americans are being forced to trade in their performance cars and large trucks and SUVs due the high price of a fill up. But one Ohio man’s invention could be setting the stage for a V8 return.

Napoleon, Ohio’s Doug Pelmear claims that he has created a V8-powered 1987 Ford Mustang that develops 400 horsepower and 500 lb-ft of torque on E85, can accelerate from 0-60 in about three seconds – on its way to a top speed of 180 mph – and still returns an astonishing 110 mpg.

Although a 400 horsepower economy car sounds too good to be true, Toledo’s Rocket Ventures, a subsidiary of the Regional Growth Partnership, has verified Pelmear’s claim, according to OzarksFirst.com.

Pelmear has yet to reveal what’s exactly under the hood of his Mustang – as he’s still waiting on a few patents – but says his work is based off the work of his grandfather who developed fuel-saving techniques during the 1940s.

Pelmear has even entered his car into the Progressive Automotive X Prize, one of the world’s foremost green car competitions that challenges contestants to “design viable, clean and super-efficient cars that people want to buy.” If you ask us, the judges should just hand over the $10 million grand prize to Pelmear right now.

Fuel mileage is limited by the energy content of the fuel, the laws of thermodynamics, and by frictional and aerodynamic loses. Gasoline has energy of combustion 11,000 calories/gram. That is the maximum energy that can go into a gasoline engine. The useful work is limited by the engine’s efficiency. The thermodynamic ideal gasoline engine is governed by the Otto cycle, which is a function of the compression ratio. The higher the compression ratio, the greater the engine efficiency. For a compression ratio of 10:1, the Otto cycle efficiency is approximately 60%. This means that you should expect 6 gallons of work out of every 10 gallons of gasoline.
However, real cars are effectively much less efficient than the Otto cycle. They may do about 12-15%. Heat losses, braking losses, drive train losses, rolling resistance, aerodynamic losses…the list goes on. The automobile manufacturers have actually done an excellent job in reducing these loses. The question remains: Just how realistic is the claim of 110 mpg?
It turns out that an ideal Otto engine driving a car at 60 mph with no rolling resistance requires a coefficient of drag of 0.33 to achieve this fuel economy. A somewhat less slippery car should be able to do it at slower speeds. The bugaboo is that this scenario requires substantial reductions in all loss mechanisms–unrealistic reductions. The claim is that the super efficient Mustang is powered by a 400 hp engine. However, it can produce no more than 17 hp at cruising speed in order to get 110 mpg.

Fuel mileage is limited by the energy content of the fuel, the laws of thermodynamics, and by frictional and aerodynamic loses. Gasoline has energy of combustion 11,000 calories/gram. That is the maximum energy that can go into a gasoline engine. The useful work is limited by the engine’s efficiency. The thermodynamic ideal gasoline engine is governed by the Otto cycle, which is a function of the compression ratio. The higher the compression ratio, the greater the engine efficiency. For a compression ratio of 10:1, the Otto cycle efficiency is approximately 60%. This means that you should expect 6 gallons of work out of every 10 gallons of gasoline.
However, real cars are effectively much less efficient than the Otto cycle. They may do about 12-15%. Heat losses, braking losses, drive train losses, rolling resistance, aerodynamic losses…the list goes on. The automobile manufacturers have actually done an excellent job in reducing these loses. The question remains: Just how realistic is the claim of 110 mpg?
It turns out that an ideal Otto engine driving a car at 60 mph with no rolling resistance requires a coefficient of drag of 0.33 to achieve this fuel economy. A somewhat less slippery car should be able to do it at slower speeds. The bugaboo is that this scenario requires substantial reductions in all loss mechanisms–unrealistic reductions. The claim is that the super efficient Mustang is powered by a 400 hp engine. However, it can produce no more than 17 hp at cruising speed in order to get 110 mpg.

Most steel engines have a thermodynamic limit of 37%. Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 20%.[7][8]