So after years of asking all the wrong people (apparently), I cornered Jim S. from MP last week and asked him specifically about the whereabouts of the W5 core boxes and whether we could ever possibly see a re-release of the W5 head.

Here's the "real" story.....

Apparently there were aprox 1400 sets of W5's cast, and of those Jim said maybe 1000 sets had to be scrapped due to terrible casting/machining issues. MP lost ALOT of $ on that deal, $100K+ loss which has made them real gun shy about the W5.

On a brighter note, he did say the core boxes do still exist and he knows exactly where they are at. Both the small chamber and normal chamber head could be re-released, if demand was proven....

What I was telling them, was there has been a resurgence in popularity in the past few years, and people are paying more today for a new in box set than they did back when the dealers had them. Plus with the fact that TTI now makes and off the shelf W5 header, and that the INDY intake can be adapted to work etc, the market is there for them.

The W5 had two critical flaws..... first the castings were horrific. This can be corrected by using a new foundry. Unfortunately Zeus went bankrupt or out of business so they are no longer using Zeus for their aluminum which is a shame. They are now using I believe CMI in Ohio.

The second was the machining which was handled by Arrow, and unfortunately is STILL being done by Arrow, but I forsee some changes coming there.

So if we could get new W5's cast at CMI with CNC machining done anywhere other than Arrow... we could have a pretty decent head, hopefully without all of the issues the 1990's versions had.

My reasoning for bringing back and extinct head would be as follows:

There really are'nt alot of "big" head choices out there for the 400+ inch motors. You have INDY with their 360-1 and -2 series heads.... and that's about it. There are no new W5's, the B1 Brodix stuff is relatively smallish, Edelbrocks are small port heads, the magnum stuff is small, and the W2's are smallish and MP keeps making less and less W2's and the ones they do make are being pushed toward T&D/Jesel only rockers, 48* bank angles, 15 degree valve angles and small chambers. They don't make a nice larger chamber W2 anymore with 18* angle and old style W2 race rockers. The Large port commando is out there, and it was supposed to be the W5's replacement... it is a great piece, but it's not quite the head a W5 is. It's limitations are in the Ex port design/header bolt pattern (TTI W2 headers don't fit exactly right), the standard 340 intake port window (non raised port) and the tiny heavily shrouded 51 CC chamber that comes cast at 3.90" bore size. Small chambers are great... except when you have 415-450 inches and a flat top piston. So I see a need for a 60-65 cc chamber, large raised port head that utilizes the old school W2 race rocker gear.

Erson, Jesel, T&D, Crane, Harland Sharp, Norris, and MP all still make & sell the W2 race rocker gear. So rocker choices are not a problem with the W5 head. (the INDY 360-1+2 series stuff on the other hand is hampered severly by a lack of rocker choices)

TTI, and Heddman now both have off the shelf W5 specific headers. Which for the duration of the W5's back in the 90's did not exist. So in other words when the W5 heads were avail, there were no headers... now there are headers and no heads to be found to use them...

Same deal with the rockers, back in the mid 90's, the W5's heyday, Ersons, T&D and Jesels for W2/5 did not exist. We have more rocker choices for these heads today than ever, and they keep discontinuing the heads????

Intake manifold availibility.... None of the Mopar W5 intakes were ever really a killer setup, but with todays advent of the INDY 360-3 intake and now the new Edelbrock Super Victors we finally have some good intakes that can be made to work on a W5 head. MP could work with Edlebrock (which we know they already are on the BB intake stuff), and come out with a new MP M1 W5 intake, taking the Super Victor and modifying it and putting a MP logo on it, and you'd have a great piece to compliment the new head. So it would not be a case where they would have to tool up an all new intake again for the old W5, they could just use existing intakes with slight casting/machining mods.

It would be nice if they also made some mods such as installing 11/32 guides with a .502" OD rather than the Arrow specialty .494" od 3/8 guides. CNC oil drainback slots, and possibly a slightly larger as cast exhaust port would all be nice added features they could do. I would also put in larger OD seats than the original W5's had so we could use a 2.10" or 2.125" valve without having to change seats.

Cast them at a good foundry out of quality aluminum, machine them at a state of the art cnc equipped shop that can hold decent production tolerances, and try to keep them in the original $1200-$1300 price range. I think based on people I talk to every day that there would be a substantial market for such a head. (Several hundred pairs a year sales) MP told me they need to be convinced of that market before they would think about doing something like re-releasing those heads. So I guess that was the point of my post.... The folks at MP DO read what is written on this board and get a feel for what is going on in the state of the hobby here. Basically I would like to see for myself and I'm sure MP would also be curious to see what peoples thoughts are on this subject of a possible re-release of the W5 cylinder heads, if they could guarantee proper quality control.

We are a small 2 man shop and we've worked on aproximately 40 sets of W5's over the past 2 years. And I see alot more people on the internet and at tracks all around the world who are running W5's today. 10 years ago you hardly saw any interest in W5's, it seems their peak usage is today, even though they have not been available at dealers since 2000?

So this is kind of an open forum...... with the main question being, if they re-released the head with good castings and machining in the $1200-$1300 bare /pair window how many people would be thinking seriously of purchasing them in the future? thoughts/opinions.........