At this year’s PRI show we ran across a Ford GT that is looking for some bragging rights in Dallas, which includes being able to turn in impressive performance numbers on the track. Dallas is not a place where packing a paltry 700 hp will get you any respect, the real players in the Big D are pushing double that. This street going GT was created for that scene and can pump out 2,000 hp on methanol, and when that’s not available it’s flexible enough to still build big numbers utilizing other fuels. It’s the creation of Shawn Fischer at Fischer Motorsports.

This car had us doing a double-take from a fair distance away. Constructed for a client, and always under continual improvement, this GT features a slew of parts that set it apart. There’s of course the built 5.4 DOHC Ford engine under the hood, with a forged rotating assembly residing beneath some drastically ported cylinder heads. It’s what sits above those heads that caught our eye.

Fischer says that one night this client called him up on the phone. The GT at that time had a 4.0 liter Whipple supercharger sitting atop the engine, and a Fischer Motorsports exhaust system. It was making 800 hp at the rear tires, but as Fischer tells us that only made it a “C player” in the local car scene. “The owner called me one night and said he was tired of getting beat by his friends in Corvettes, he wanted to build something to show them all up,” says Fischer.

Fischer worked directly with Whipple to develop a custom 4.5 liter supercharger that would be part of an overall package to breathe new life into the GT. “The beauty of the screw system is that you have almost instant boost, and great response on throttle tip in. The fastest drag cars in the world are screw supercharged cars because of the torque they’re able to generate off throttle,” says Fischer.

As anyone experienced with any type of forced induction, and especially this style supercharger is aware, the biggest problem stems from heat. “Ultimately with screws [superchargers] the downsides are heat, and it comes down to mitigating and managing the heat in the system. My philosophy with that comes from our professional drag racing. Our maximum horsepower limits are always limited by the detonation limit. The detonation limit is always the result of excessive thermal energy. So it’s really all about heat, and heat management in my opinion.”

Fischer has taken that philosophy seriously with the build on this GT, engineering unique systems for managing the heat, and creating more horsepower with the car. One of the first major steps in this was engineering the supercharger to operate without the built in throttles. “By doing that the blower becomes an RPM device and whatever RPM it’s at, that’s how much air it’s going to flow,” says Fischer, who says this approach keeps fresh, ambient air moving across the supercharger, leading to cooler operating temperatures.

The next step is the hot water bypass kit. Fischer removes the water necks from the factory intake manifolds, and replaces them with billet units which bolt directly to the cylinder heads. He then adds a 3/8-inch thick phenolic spacer to the system, further isolating heat from the cylinder heads and the engine from soaking the blower. “Right off the bat we’re about 100 degrees cooler than what a typical system would run”.

“We had to find a way to get a better intercooler into the system,” and to that end Fischer has replaced the stock intercooler on this GT with a billet insert that acts as a diverter, sending air back to a new intercooler, which is basically two of the stock Ford GT Garrett/Honeywell 1,000 hp units that have been welded together to create a 2,000 hp capable system.

Once the compressed air charge has exited the intercooler via the four-inch tubing it heads to the drive-by-wire throttle body which is housed inside the setup. Fischer also says the DBW throttle gives more precise throttle response and allows for even more flexibility in the engine management system. This includes some trick tuning work by Fischer “There are a quite a few things we can do with the drive-by-wire system, for example if we get a compression braking lock-up we can mitigate that.”

Two additional injectors are there to cool the rotors of the blower if needed.

Additional features include a change to a mechanical fuel pump to push more methanol fuel to the injectors. An ice-water tank also replaces the factory frame spar. Fischer says that this can be used for drag or standing mile events, and should cool the intake charge to around 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Two additional methanol injectors are present at the blower inlet as well to provide a cooling effect should case temperatures rise too high, Fischer says those would rarely be used.

Four Tial 60mm waste-gates are mounted to the intercooler tank, three of those open when the throttle is closed to relieve boost pressure. The remaining waste-gate is used for boost control, which is all managed by the Motec computer system, which Fischer specializes in tuning.

Last as an added safety measure Fischer has added traction control to the car. Boost is controlled by RPM and gear, ramping up appropriately. “As soon as the computer sees excessive wheel slip it will come in and stop it, but it’s a race-grade traction control, so it won’t bounce your head off the dashboard, and it’s barely noticeable when it’s active at all,” says Fischer.

The GT was nearing completion when Fischer showed it at PRI, and we’re sure it will be hunting prey in the Dallas area soon enough.