If you showed me a picture of this 2017 Ford Super Duty and told me it had an engine swap, I would never guess what was under the hood. I thought I’d seen everything up to this point, like older Ford Power Stroke diesels swapped into newer trucks and even a 12-valve Cummins. But this Blue Oval isn’t Ford-powered, nor does it have an oil-burning inline-six. Instead, it has a honkin’ 8.1-liter big-block Chevy V8 with a turbo strapped to it.
It’s the work of Evan Thompson, who’s been known by his buddies to do this type of thing. “I also built a Fox body Mustang with a twin-turbo LS and all-wheel drive/four-wheel drive if you’d be interested,” he laughed. And while I imagine that’s a riot, I had to learn more about this new(ish) Ford pickup with a GM engine that was discontinued 15 years ago.
“As for the truck and the idea, I had an F-150 but it just wasn’t cutting it for the amount of towing I do,” Thompson explained. “So naturally I started looking for F-250s.”
Since he lives in Michigan, in the heart of the Rust Belt, he wanted a 2017 or newer Super Duty since their bodies are made entirely of aluminum. Thompson found this rig listed by a local dealer on Facebook Marketplace without a transmission or a transfer case, so he offered $6,500 and they took it. Before long, he was dragging the extended cab home.
“I usually do the overplayed LS swaps in everything. I own 4 LS boosted vehicles other than this truck,” Thompson continued. “But I wanted to try something different this time. Everyone raves about the torque the 8.1s get, and being 496 cubic inches I thought it would be cool to try out.”
I don’t think a better reason exists, to be honest.
Fortunately, one of Thompson’s friends was parting out a truck with an 8.1-liter Vortec. He bought that and began investigating what he’d need to complete the swap. While it shares more in common with older big-blocks, it runs the same ECU as contemporary LS engines with a super similar wiring harness. That meant Thompson was already familiar with nearly everything required for the job.
Strapped with knowledge of GM V8s and forced induction, Thompson decided to boost it. He went with a billet VS Racing dual ball-bearing 7875 turbo, which he mounted up with a homebuilt log-style manifold. It runs between seven and eight psi of boost, putting it somewhere in the range of 500 horsepower and 700 lb-ft of torque on pump gas.
“I built it as a tow rig so torque was the main goal,” Thompson said. “I was trying to make diesel power numbers with the reliability and simplicity of a gas engine.”
He didn’t get fancy with the transmission either as he opted for a 4L80E instead of an Allison. While many 8.1-liter trucks came with an Allison from the factory, others including the Avalanche and Suburban had the four-speed automatic so the transmission tuning was easy to make work. Thompson fettled with the settings a bit using HP Tuners and voila, it was good to go. Given his experience rebuilding these transmissions, he figured it’d be the better (and cheaper) option.
What all this results in is a workhorse with big, reliable power and virtually no compromises. It even has working air conditioning with “most” of the dash functioning as it should, save for the tachometer. Not bad for a truck that probably still costs less to build than buying a used 6.7-liter Power Stroke.
Sure, it took a little work, but so do most good things in life. And now Thompson has a stellar rig to show for it.
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