Greetings and salutations fellow Genny Drivers,
I was looking for a power programmer for my 5.0 rspec. I would love to get her up around 500 hp. Do any of you have ideas or things you have done to add power?
The Hyundai 5.0 made 85.8 hp/liter in 2012 at peak. This engine was pretty well at the front of the curve for it's time at its price point of $38-45k new. And no it's not fair to compare it to the BMW M3 engine which did 450 hp in 4.4 liters (102 hp/l) because the car cost roughly double. You can buy a low miles used 6 year old E92 M3 today in the high $30's , or about the same as what you would pay for a brand new RSpec in 2012... yep, the bimmer was and is that good.
Compare the Hyundai 2012 5.0 Rspec engine (86 hp/l) to a couple modern v8s:
In 2012 the GM 6.2 NA (port injected) motor made 426 HP at 68 hp/l. The 2016 GM normally aspirated GDI 6.2 is 73.4 hp/liter ('16 Camaro SS, '15 Corvette Stingray/Z51). Guys doing full bolt-ons but keeping it NA (heads, headers, intakes, etc.) are only getting maybe 85-90 hp/l or about where the Hyundai 5.0 was 4 years earlier. Are GM engines crap? No, these engines make
way better torque down low compared to others, so butt-dyno driveability is superior to most others under 4k rpm.
In 2012, the GT made 412 hp or 82.4 hp/l. The 2018 Ford GDI 5.0 Bullitt is 92 hp/liter, up from 90 in the standard GT. Most of this is at peak, sacrificing some down low torque.
The Dodge 6.4 made 470 hp in 2012, or 73.4 hp/l.
What "we" have done as a community to mod our engines is pretty much nothing. Most folks here are daily driving their cars. Other than suspension
mods, there's basically no
aftermarket for this car. Nobody that I know of makes forged pistons, powder metal rods, forged cranks or cams for this engine that will support boosting to 500-1000 hp . Sure you can gap your own rings for adding boost, but adding more than 100 HP will probably start breaking things. Most NA engines with cast pistons and cranks and forged rods have a factor of safety of 50% which means 600-700 max HP. So if you blow it up you will have only Copart and HMA to look to. And that's if you can even find someone to tune it. Not even sure that's possible unless you speak Korean and have access to the
KDM market.
Your 5.0 is pretty well set up already from the factory. The awesome BMW M3 NA v8 notwithstanding, Hyundai's 5.0 engine was at the top of it's class for affordable v8's a half decade ago. Tuning to raise your lambda closer to 1 MIGHT get you 3-5% at the very top of the HP curve at WOT/Redline. But you probably don't go there much, and if you do you'll probably blow it up.
Now, getting someone to custom grind a cam for the car and porting the heads to improve low end torque I'm sure is possible for someone with a large wallet, but you'll also have to find someone to tune it. And that last bit will be the tough part unless they have a Korean cousin who just happens to be a Hyundai drivetrain engineer.
I wish you good luck and please post back here what you discover in your quest for power. This forum could use more folks like you and Audio and a few others who are willing to open up their toolboxes and take the big leap with DIY work (and hopefully
mods).
