I look at it this way. My 500 cubic inch engine lasted 275 passes running 8.60's- 9.0's. (440 block) In Pa weather that takes me 3 maybe 4 years before I finally cracked a block.( no fill, no girdle) It costs me about 400-500 dollars paid out to do prep work on a race block so that's cheap in my eyes. If you go fast enough with a stock block sooner or later its going to fail and I don't care what you do to it. Now I know some street guys are going to jump in and say but,but, but in my statement I said IF you go fast enough. Running 9.0's-10.0's with stock stroke, stock crank engines my cranks would have cracks in them every rebuild (3-4 years)but i never cracked a block. I got to the place where I would tear the engine down and not even check the crank for cracks. I would just throw it on the scrap pile. I broke one stock main cap before switching over to a set of 440source bilit caps. By the way the block that cracked never leaked a drop of water, ran a 8.62@155mph on its last pass, and the crack was found during Winter tear-down.