Respect Your Elders

Ted Eaton’s 60-Year-Old Mercury Y-Block Takes Vintage Class Win

- Evan Perkins

Making an engine designed in the 1950s produce more than four times its original horsepower output is tough. Taking that same engine and winning the 2016 AMSOIL Engine Masters Challenge Presented by HOT ROD—now that’s even harder. Ted Eaton accomplished that exact feat with his Mercury Y-block engine, churning out class-winning peaks of 603.2 hp and 565.5 lb-ft of torque, a far cry from what the original designers ever could have thought possible. How did he do it? Ingenuity, a whole lot of testing and development time, and help from teammates Fred Hertzog, Lonnie Putnam, Jody Orsag, and Steve Culp.