Nelson Racing Engines has done it again. The guys from the SoCal performance shop are famous in the “go fast” industry, and they have put together a twin-turbocharged engine that spins the dyno at 2,100 horsepower. Chevy Hardcore spoke with Tom Nelson about this engine, and here’s what he had to say.

This shot shows why the turbos are called mirror image.

The Specs

In the video, Tom says the engine sounds “hot roddy and it revs…..it revs….insane.” He’s absolutely right. As mentioned above, it puts out an insane 2,100 horsepower. What’s more, this engine isn’t destined for something competing on the NHRA circuit. This monster is going into a street car. Tom ran the dyno tests in stages, starting with a paltry 9 pounds of boost, finally turning that up to 30 pounds.

• With 9 pounds of boost, the engine produced 1,173 horsepower at 5,900 rpm, and 1,323 lb-ft of torque at 6,200 rpm.
• At 16 pounds of boost, those numbers jumped to 1,513 horsepower at 6,200 rpm, and 1,452 lb-ft of torque.
• 22 pounds of boost pushed the numbers up to 1,818 horsepower at 6,500 rpm, and 1,636 lb-ft of torque at 5,300 rpm.
• It developed 2,100 horsepower at 6,400 rpm, and 1,724 lb-ft of torque at 6,200 rpm with 30 pounds of boost

Inside the Engine

The block is a Brodix 540 cubic-inch big-block Chevy with Brodix 383 Headhunter heads. Bore and stroke on the engine is 4.500 and 4.250 inches respectively, with a Callies forged crankshaft. All pistons that go into Tom’s super high performance engines are custom JE Pistons with billet Oliver connecting rods.

In Tom’s words, “The camshaft is super mellow.” Lift is an extremely-mild .240-inch, and it only uses 250 degrees of duration. Tom continued, “Those huge turbos don’t need much camshaft.” He wouldn’t cough up the info on the supplier, though. Tucked into the heads are 2.350-inch intake and 1.900-inch exhaust valves.

1659 horses galloping around at 18 pounds of boost.

Supplying the go juice to the engine is a dual-fuel fuel injection system. The intake is one of Nelson Racing’s custom 5-inch, oval-snout Alien intake manifolds, so-called because front and profile view resembles the head of the monster from Ridley Scott’s famous Aliens movie series.

Getting Boosted

The real horsepower comes from the twin, Mirror Image 88 mm turbos that the Tom used. Even for an engine this size, 88 mm is pretty big, and when you consider that there are two of them… What makes them so special though is the fact that they are mirror image units.

Nelson’s mirror image turbos make for a clean, twin turbo installation that we really like.

Before the advent of the mirror image turbo design, when rodders installed twin turbos, they had to do funky things with the plumbing to get the intake and exhaust sides of the turbo properly orientated. Mirror image turbos are designed to mirror each other, putting the fresh air intake where it should be, and the exhaust outlet where it should be on both sides. Not only does this make for an engine bay that is much less cluttered and cleaner, it’s more efficient.

So sit back and watch the video. You can hear Tom’s excitement as he “powers” through the dyno test. We’re equally as excited, as 2,100 horsepower is nothing to sneeze at, especially for use in a street car.