All is true to some extent, I have been keeping in touch with Darren and Tim. All backorders will be finished before any new orders is what I have been told. I will share pictures in each stage as they are given to me. They are really trying to step it up, so it appears. The next month will be the proof or not. I want to see it as much as anyone. There has been a lot of time nothing happened, now it is time to prove they are stepping up and grabbing the bull by the horns. It has been a very long road for a few of us and them. I do know there has been some blocks shipped recently and that is a very good sign.

Back in 86 I worked at a machine shop in Bethel Park one of our biggest customers was Allegheny Ludlum.

Nice. It is crazy what work was done in our area. We made our own Babbitt bearings for our big mill stands. Pallets of lead weighing 1500 pounds.

So....Who is the big cheese in charge of this operation? A pm would be nice....

Darren Beale is the main money man with KB now. He's from Queensland Australia

Thanks! I have all of the info I need.

Well my block arrived today. It was like pulling Hens teeth to get it. But it did arrive. Have faith.

That's good news. Hopefully more start to roll in and they can get to building B and RB blocks.

This is great news. Someday our dreams of picking up the phone and ordering a finished block may be possible

Once these blocks hit the market I'd expect some more really serious cylinder head options and availability as well. These blocks look like serious pieces.

Awesome, hope it all comes together. It has been a very long time for a few of us...

The guy I talked to that ordered off the new Owners said one owner stepped up with one other person and ordered a lot of blocks to be cast and machined not to long ago. If you do not have blocks you can not run your own business of Building Hemi Motors. Hope the block copchaser received was one of those and things are starting to turn around. I saw two KB blocks months ago and was very impressed on what I had seen and heard of the strength of the block. Maybe the blocks being machined in Michigan are even a better product.

with it

There are plenty of cylinder head choices out there now. All ya gotta do is make a decision pick up the phone and order them. Stuff like this makes me wonder if I live in some sort of parallel universe.

Good to hear people who have waited for years for a block are finally getting taken care of. Hopefully at some point in the future we will have the ability to order and receive in a timely manner a block with the options needed to make good HP from KB again.

When I worked there (in the block department) we put out a block a day. This isn't rocket science guys. You just do a block and ship it out. (Or the racer would come to pick it up.) It's really that easy. Everybody wants to make this seem like a black art and almost impossible. It's not. I hear every excuse imaginable on these threads. Can't get sleeves, porosity issues, can't figure out how to make a main cap, can't get studs, etc. What a bunch of smack. KB has been making blocks over 40 years. Do you reckon they know how to get a block out? There has been something else going here for a long time.

Copchaser, so after all is said and done what was the actual cost to your door?

From what I was told not every block was making the grade and the failure rate was to high when manufacturing began again. Do not know what the failure rate was before. Main caps were an issue also and this I believe has been solved in the last month. I think the biggest issue might of been KB itself being run as a 1960s company and needed to be upgraded or revamped. I was also told about 1 block a day can be cast and then it takes time to machine and add parts but once it is set up that is still one day for each block to be ready for shipping if everything is cast correctly and the cast block has no problems. You can not have employees sitting around doing nothing all day if there are block failures. So I look at it this way, the process of machining needs to be done out of house and the same goes for assembly. An outside source needs to be used that does some of the same work or has the capability to machine the rough blocks and assemble the blocks and this would be added work for a company that is set up for this kind of process. Ship this company a vast amount of blocks to be machined and assembled and have them with their own trained work force put them together with their set up to do machining and assembly. This company would then have the capability to move workers around to other work and the costs of doing it would stay stable.

rickseeman what was the process like when you worked at KB and did they produce more than Hemi Blocks when you were there working.

Also heard that the new company once on track with the Hemi Block is looking into doing the Chevy Block. Not sure if this is just a dream but I can see this happening because of the amount of racers that run Chevy equipment compared to Mopars. If there is an interest in that block it would help finance everything to keep running in the future.

When I was there most of the machine work was done before the blocks were brought to us. There were 3 of us. Dave West did the line bore, Tom Hynd did the cylinder hone and line hone and I did the rest. For those of you that don't understand the machining of blocks you can watch it on You Tube. It involves putting the block casting in a machine and pushing the start button. After an hour or so you take the block out and reposition it and push the start button again. Then after an hour or so you might take it out and put it in another machine and push the start button again. The block is now done. Then they send the block to us and we make it race ready. Don't get me wrong, if you are a start-up trying to do all this the cost/time/learning curve would be astronomical. But that isn't the case here. KB has been doing this same block for over 40 years and nothing has changed.

We only did Hemi blocks then.

Total cost to my door a little over $7k. Paid for freight 2 times, lol.

The block is a work of art, beautiful piece! Was shipped in a cardboard box, yes a cardboard box not a wood pallet or crate. After 4 years, a free T-shirt would of been nice. Wishful thinking, lol. It is very nice!