Thunder Racing Engines in Blackfoot, Idaho, builds all types of performance engines, and this bullet built by Greg Stoltz, is destined for a water-speed-record 26-foot catamaran. According to Thunder’s Bill Schultz, “It’s a 548-cubic-inch Chevy with a M5 ProCharger on it. It’s going into a 26-foot Eliminator cat hull that we’re going to try to set the single-engine speed record with – it actually belongs to a friend of mine, Nick Stoltz. He has to run 150 MPH in the flying mile to break the record.”

The M5 is ProCharger’s largest marine supercharger and is capable of well north of 2,500 horsepower when pullied correctly. The engine has all forged internals, including a Crower crankshaft, Manley rods, and a custom set of pistons to handle the horsepower from the ProCharger. Ported and polished Dart 360 cylinder heads sit on top of the beast, and electronic fuel injection from BigStuff3 will feed the engine; air is forced through through a one-0ff custom-built billet manifold. 

In this video, the engine makes 1,330 horsepower on its first pull, but Schultz feels there is much more left inside.

“We’re not even done with this engine – so far we’ve made 1,600 horsepower, and I think we can make 1,800 on pump gas. Here in Idaho, we don’t get 93 – 91 is the best we’ve got. Once we got to about 1,300 horsepower, the intake air temperatures started to go up, so we decided at that point that we needed a bigger intercooler.  We’re currently waiting on a 3000-horsepower-capable intercooler from Chiseled Performance to show up, and we’ll be getting it back on the pump again next weekend and twist it up with C18 fuel to push it to 2,500 or 2,800 horsepower,” he says.

The plan was to produce an engine that could be used with two purposes in mind – first, to be able to go out and have lots of fun with it on pump gas, then be able to break records when wound up on race fuel. So far, it looks like the Thunder Racing Engines team and Stoltz Racing are well on their way to achieving their goal.