5.7 Hemi USA or German built

So, according to this I should be putting a mexican-built 360 ('83) into my canadian-assembled '70 Dart. lol. Oh, the wonders of outsourced work.

Man.......I'm giving up on cheeseburgers next. LOL

German influence?
No

Japanese and General Motors influence?
Perhaps

Mexican Built?
Yes

The articles I have read state that
the first influence on the 5.7 V8 was the whole post war series of Chrysler Hemi's
which were inspired by aircraft engine designs, particularly the 'upside down' V16 that Chrysler designed for the US Army-Air Force but that came a bit to late in 1945 to see actual production.

After the 426 V8 became a legend,
it in turn inspired
Japanese engine designers at Nissan to create the NAPS-Z cylinder head,
with semi-hemi canted valves,
higher swirl and tumble,
and twin spark plugs.
The Nissan designers were proud enough of these design tweaks to the Hemi head that they did a full write of it in the 1981 SAE Journal...
and, this is important ...
included 'real world' numbers on how clean it was from a pollution standpoint.

http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/810010

When Bob Lutz was overseeing the V8s at Chrysler, a replacement was needed for the Magnum V8s, and several people wanted to go back to canted valve semi-hemi cylinder head design to get more flow.

The objection to Hemi cyl head then by some engineers was primarily:
"It will be way to dirty to ever pass EPA emissions even with today's catalytic converters."

The Hemi advocates pulled the old Nissan NAPS-Z paper out and showed how a modern Hemi head could be quite clean. This was the settlement of the key stumbling block.

Bob Lutz gave the go ahead for the new 5.7 Hemi, just a few months before the Germans gave him the 'Golden Parachute' and Chrysler lost his skills for no good reason.
I heard 'Maximum Bob' Lutz today on the early morning radio talking at the Detroit Auto Show, in typical
'Never Give Up'
spirit of an ex-Marine fighter pilot.

Tom Hoover and other retired Chrysler engineers were indeed asked for their thoughts and opinions on the new engine design.

Another key person that should not be forgotten is that factory cost control whiz Tom LaSorda had been lured away from GM, and LaSorda in turn helped recruit away from GM a couple of their best cylinder head designers, whose names escape me at the moment..
(Maybe brothers Ken Sperry/Ron Sperry, or Pat Baer ? Please post if you know the name of the guy)
but they were the 'cathedral roof' intake port designers.
They had unsuccessfully argued while working at GM that a 350 with Hemi heads would be superior, but got shot down each time. As part of the deal of moving to Chrysler, it was promised that the new V8 would be 350 cubic inches (5.7L) so that they could prove to ex-workmates at GM that his past ideas had been indeed right.

For Chrysler, the modern 5.7 Hemi was a financial success because it was so cheap to produce. Part of this was that the engine was assembled of 'modules' that were built by non-Chrysler parts suppliers, and of course the other factor was that the complete engine was assembled at the then-new Saltillo Engine Plant II in Mexico. Tom LaSorda had a lot to do with keeping these costs low.

My rough calculation is that from 2003 to 2006 the 5.7 Hemi low production costs added about 6$ Billion of 'free cash flow' to Chrysler's bottom line.

I doubt that Tom Hoover or any of the older Hemi designers saw any bonuses from this $, but they should have.

more reading

http://www.thehemi.com/news.php?id=20050824-1

http://www.search-autoparts.com/searchautoparts/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=66741

http://www.sae.org/automag/techbriefs/10-2002/

http://www.hemmings.com/mus/stories/2008/03/01/hmn_feature13.html

http://www.hotrod.com/techarticles/engin...e_variants.html

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:Q77u...=clnk&gl=us

Good read. Was the term: Volumetric efficiency?
I like the 5.7 and own 2. Sweet sound sweet power. Good mileage a bonus. I love to romp on the Charger. 6 speed Challenger, more attention. Less fun.

For that matter, ever seen the lower end of an LS1?

360view's post makes alot of sense but nobody really knows for sure except the folks who were there at the time.....

There was also an article back about the year 2000 about a big closed door engine design conference between just the German Mercedes engineers, and the American Chrysler engineers.

The main thing I remember from the article is that someone was quoted as saying,
concerning the combustion effects of using twin spark plugs:

They taught us some stuff we did not know,
and we taught them stuff that they did not know,
and in the end we decided that twin plugs were indeed good.

Remember that when you are trying to get to the #8 cylinder plugs to change them.

Someone said?....An article said....Please. Was there one German engineer that was in the 5.7L group? Guess what not one.Not one in management either.If you want to give them credit be my guest.Because some rookie engineer learned something means nothing.Engines had dual plugs and a similar chamber in 20's-30's aircraft engines.Fiat had a similar design on their 124's in the 70's.Formula 1 cars had it in the 50's and 60's.Maybe they inspired the 5.7L.What's with the Benz love? They don't deserve it.Post it on the Benz board.

Btw talk a newer Hemi style engine went all the way back to pre Viper days.

I am not giving credit to the Benz engineers for the twin spark plugs in the 5.7.

As I think can be seen in the above post,
I tried to first give credit to the aircraft hemi's where nearly all of them had twin plugs
.... then I give credit to the Nissan NAPS-Z engineers,
not for inventing twin spark plugs,
but for taking the time and effort to publish emissions data in 'hard numbers' that saved the 5.7 project from naysayers

I certainly think credit is due to 426 designers, and to drag racers who put twin spark plugs back into their engines

As to 'hear-say'
I certainly believe in giving references,
but my memory is not longer good enough to pull them out of the air when the bookmarks in my web browser does not have them.

Do Benz engineers deserve any credit for ANY of the 5.7 design?

I don't know the exact answer,
but again here is some 'hear-say'
... I seem to recall reading that Chrysler contracted out some
CRANKSHAFT
design work to Mercedes Benz on the
4.7 V8
because their German computer models were well thought of for reducing the last bits of tricky torsional vibration,
and also lightening up the rotating weight by putting metal only where its strength was actually needed.

I do not know if any 5.7 crankshaft work was sent out.

Well at least your comments make sense and COULD HAVE happened.

The Ray Barton name drop above, however, is a whole other story

It was the LEAD engineer of the 5.7l HEMI engine project that told me he had questioned both Tom Hoover and Ray Barton on what THEY thought could be improved on in the OLD (gen2) Hemi. He stated that both agreed that the CAM needed to be as high in the block as possible to help correct the valvetrain geometry.

Additionally, he commented that when he presented the design in Stutgart the Germans were amazed at the effectiveness and simplicity of the MDS (cylinder deactivation) as compared to their previous attempts on the MB V-12.

Just saying.......

Thx for the detail.

I would believe one phone call but not much more