I finally got my old 440 block on the stand to check it out. This was my original TT440 engine and I rattled the detonation so hard I broke 4 rings. I was a few hundred miles from home when I blew the head gasket between 4 and 6. Driving it that far scorched the block.

The engine was pulled, torn down, and stuffed under the bench several years ago.

I was hoping to use this block to build a cruising engine for my Imperial. What are the pros thoughts on this thing?

Deck it and run with whatever scoring is left?
Sleeve the two holes?
Scrap the block?
Other ideas?

hi feets, deck it .010 and see how crooked/uneven ,cooked the deck was and then mabe deck it another .010. ronnie

I have three 440 blocks in my shop right now and none of them are special to me. 1 is a complete 1977 440 MH engine and trans that I bought for $100.00, 1 is a block with main caps that was given to me and the last 1 is one out of a '77 D300 that drove onto the trailer (I paid $800.00 for the complete truck) and it has almost no ridge in the cylinders so it will be a great backup for the one 440 engine that I do care about and it is resting in the Ramcharger.

As to the scored 440...I would slide that back under your bench and find a good, low mile engine from some old man's Chrysler to refresh. Chances are you will spend less that way than doing a lot of machine work trying to make that one well again...but what do I know?

Experimental hacking is the last thing I want to do.

If it can be repaired with sleeves then it will need to be decked afterwards. Then, I'll have a block that is decked at least .030 and I will start to run into geometry issues with the intake manifold.

I don't think going .010 will be deep enough to clear this up.

I'm not a pro, so I apologize if I'm wasting your time, but from what I can see that looks like repair would require specialized welding, decking, and at least 1 sleeve. Been in a similar situation a couple times years ago with iron heads cracked between valve seats.
Should be a decent 440 block around for less than that will cost, plus whatever other problems might be found after close inspection.

Is it already decked? Where's the .030 figure from? My local shop can deck it and basically just 'kiss' the deck after a sleeve and only remove .005. Just enough to set the sleeve flush with the rest.

If it needs .030 to clear that crack, then disregard this post

Not a pro but I'd be leery of working with it. I would scrap it & find another candidate.

I'm wondering if decking the block would have a desired benefit in terms of CR (and of course making sure it's flat) for the end purpose of being the crusing mill for the Imp?

If so, pretty good reason to consider looking into it further.

I would want a different block that has not been decked,because I thought you were building a good quench engine , this ditched block will probobly create a shelf piston use problem.

I've built two motors that had worse deck damage than yours has now, one was in my pump Gas duster and the other is still in a race car today running very well
The 440 block melted a Fel Pro Permatorque OEM replacement head gasket between #4 and # 6 cylinder blowing the deck surface and head surface out between those cylinders like a cutting torch does
EDITED! I had that block decked welded and then surfaced on a wet grinder, (the weld will break a rotary surfacing wheel ) smooth enough to get a good seal and ended up using a thicker head gasket to race that motor again with 14.5+ to1 compression ratio
The second motor was the block that was in my old pump gas Duster, it was blown out between the same cylinders the same way but worse I had it brazed up and had two sleeves put in those two cylinders, it ended up needing two other sleeves on the other side due to pitting I didn't see the deck damage when I bought that block from a friend and we didn't know about the pitting either
I beat the snot out of that motor and it ran and ruled the local streets with no problems
My message is all thing mechanical are fixable, if you want to spend the money and time fixing them
BTW, I bought and use Darton ductile iron sleeves in that block, not cheap but they sure have worked well
IHTHs

I would think a diesel block repair shop that specializes in welding blocks could fix that with no problem.

Can it be salvaged? Most likely.

Cheaper than finding another 440 block? Doubtful.

That looks more like a crack to me.

And just for reference it only took .007 to deck and square my 493.

Kevin

Another thing to consider with this block, if you ran it deep enough into detonation long enough and often enough to crack it there (instead of a torch cut) there might be additional cracks or micro-fractures above the ring ridge that have not fully manifested themselves yet. And maybe not in just those two cylinders. There, just waiting until you are in the deep woods of Nova Scotia, alone, at night, miles from a decent bar...sorry...house of ill repute..sorry.. ment to say service facility and then you lose a chunk of block or cylinder wall. You then wander off from the car only to become known as the Nova Scotia Sasquatch due the size of the Imperial and the tracks leading away from the car into the woods.

I'd find another block, in simpler words, if it were me.

Agreed, it sure looks like an obvious crack (& a bad/deep/extensive one to boot). I sure would be leery of investing time/money in it.

It's Bob wins this discussion !!!

Kevin , has this block been previously decked ?

Not to my knowledge.

I pulled this engine out of a junk yard around 1990. It looked original to the New Yorker so I don't think it had ever been opened. There have been a couple low budget builds since I've had it but those didn't include decking.

In my experience certainly fixable. Couple different ways to repair the crack that I know of. Neither is really cheap though.

Also from my experience when a B/RB block has detonated that bad the main bearing caps will walk around some. You can see this by looking carefully at the mating surfaces.

If they've bounced around the entire block has seen a fair amount of stress. Perhaps that, coupled with the deck surface crack would be enough to make you dubious of trying to save it.

Can't you have the block magnafluxed/sonic checked and tell exactly how thick, and/or deep the crack is? If your local shop can't do this, then you don't want them doing the machine work anyway. Seems cheap insurance to ensure you don't sink a lot of $$$ into it,just to find it'll take a lot more money to fix it right.
In the end, only you can decide if it's worth the $$$ outlay, to fix it for what you want it for.

Is having the decks squared in the budget for this, that should pretty much clean that out ... assuming it's not actually a crack, which can be found via a magnaflux which would be the first thing to do to this block considering it's history.