“…..Those pistons look like Hemi pistons to me in a poly block, correct?
Will the hemi pushrod clear in that block without grinding?......”

No those are HEMI pistons in a HEMI (only) block.

The grinding would only be necessary if I was running POLY heads on this block.


Cab I think you probably missed the post I made back in September.


“…….Shortly after the last post I ran into a show stopper on the Poly portion of the build. Something I should have thought about when I started doing my initial measurements was whether there would be interference issues between the combustion chamber in the 301 Poly head and the size of the cylinder bore on a 354 block (there is .3125 difference between bore size on the 301 and 354). Basically the head overhangs the cylinder bore. I’ve got some feelers out for 354 Poly heads/a complete motor but so far not a lot of luck.

For now we’re going to go ahead with the hemi portion of the build. We got the block sonic checked to be sure it will safely go out the .125” to standard bore 354……….”

So basically the engine is going back together as a plain Jane old HEMI.

This is probably a good time to recap what I’ve learned so far so I’ll do that in the next post.