Who has used the new MM block?

Are they a reality yet? How did it go if you have one? Havent seen much on them lately.

well MM has been closed for sometime. That's probably a pretty good indicator.

From what has been said about these blocks, the fact that MM has closed up shop was not supposed to affect the availability of these blocks. I think the Chicago Connection was supposed to be a dealer for them. Maybe give them a call and see what the deal is?

http://www.chicagoconnection.us/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1

There is at least one member here who has one (can't recall his handle), but has not had the engine built yet.

Just a fyi I ordered one last July and still haven't got mine yet. I've been getting the run around for the last couple months. In my pursuit to get my block I've spoken with some guys on FB that have had similar issues. One guy had to spend a lot of money on extra machine work to get his right I think he just got the motor together but hasn't run it. Another guys block is it best machine being checked for issues now.
I heard they were having casting issues but the info I've been getting is they've fixed those issues. If and when I get my block it's supposed to be this weekend Its going right to the machine shop for a once over.

Don't care

Polyspheric I haven't felt comfortable with this deal for months and have kept detailed records of all communications with the seller. Just in case I need to take legal action, payment was made via credit card and a claim will be filed if need be.

Credit card chargebacks have a very limited time frame. I hope it works out and you don't need to test that limit.

I saw this photo on Faceboogie. Are these the blocks in this thread? Not sure what these blocks are, but it's not at Barton according to the guy that posted the photo.

Yes those look to be THE BLOCK the Bradshaw family out of Indiana is who was working with MM and the shop I'm dealing with on getting the blocks cast and machined
mr_340 do you happen to have a link to that FB page so I can investigate you can pm or post it but I do appreciate it.

"Do we really have to watch this kind of sad parade again?
1. announcement!
2. delay
3. price increase
4. delay
5. price increase
6. delay
7. problems
8. $$$$$$$$ to fix problems"

Not me. I'm too old to play hide the bologna with good parts or use something that I know is going to break. I have other plans. Just waiting to see what the budget is.

I have one. It has some issues but nothing that scares me. What scares me if there is something I don't know of. BES (Bischoff) is working on fixing it.

Your in good hands with BES doing the motor

What are said issues?

Looks there's one for sale in the Hemi engine parts.
Quite a few OEM are coming out for sale.
Must be scaring the hoarders that have been hanging to them.
Now we get a block, theirs will not be worth as much.

Don't care

Don't care

I talked to Mopar marketing rep at the Dallas race last year. He said they had 150 hemi castings of the world block AT THE MACHINE SHOP. They would be done and displayed at SEMA. He gave me his card and promised me. Still no blocks. Everyone seems to have the same problem to blame, casting flaws. Jamie Passoms holdup with transmission has been the same deal. I don’t see how we produce anything in the country anymore.

If it was this tough to cast a block, there would be oil and water squirting out of the wrong places on half the cars driving up and down the highway. I don't know how to do it, but it looks like someone does.

Huge difference in process and tooling between production and low volume stuff...

Don't care

Why did Mopar Performance stop doing the old Megablocks??? from like back in the 90s?

And then why did MP stop again when they started doing them again like 10 years ago?

Why did World Stop making the HEMI blocks???

Where is all that tooling? Those were all good blocks....werent they?

No money in it.

Don't care

Having worked for a foundry I can tell you that the dies/molds are not always owned by the entity actually selling the product, not always owned the by foundry, or whom ever. All depends on how the contract was written. I personally scrapped toyota GM ford and Chrysler dies. We held onto them for xxx amount of time then Scrapped them. Some does we’re owned by those car makers others by the foundry. All depends. Does not mean they are gone. Doesn’t mean they are still. Around either.

Where I worked we held onto VW oil pan dies for seven years after ceasing production. Then we scrapped them. On the other hand I am sure there are Dana 44 axle housing does still here.
If world or Mopar had the calls coming in for them and they owned the molds they could run some blocks.

Another variable - who did the machining - some foundries do it. Some don’t. Would Mopar have the tooling? Likely not but I would think world might.

Where can I find the book you wrote and where can I buy them?

Don't care

poly, you for one, has helped me immensely over the years to increase my understanding of how things work, and things to avoid while getting the most out of what one has. i, for one, thank you profusely ! keep this up as long as you are able, if possible.

Thanks

Back in either 1964 or 1965 a really good smart old timer mechanic(65 Yrs old+ back then) that had raced on Muroc dry lake before WW2 told me that there was nothing new being invented in cars, airplanes or train internal combustion engines since the early 1930s
I'm not sure when and exactly which year Wankle design the rotary motor but I seem to remember it being before WW2 also
Many parts and components have been improved since then like ignitions, rods, pistons, cam lobes, valve springs and so on
Keep testing and tuning to go faster

When Chrysler Corporation decided to stop producing bigblocks they scrapped the molds and sold leftover inventory for dirt cheap. Brand new 400 shortblocks in a crate, $400. 452 heads were something like $50 each, I am not remembering exactly.
So when they wanted to produce blocks again they had to build all new molds. At the time, this was widely publicized.

When the first batch was produced, thee were issues with casting quality and after a while Chrysler walked away from the deal, taking their molds (property) with them. At the time it seemed that World was bringing out a new block type every week. So Chrysler worked out a deal with World and started producing cast iron and aluminum blocks. But the deal ended somehow and Chrysler took their molds and left. A big difference this time is that Bill Mitchell managed to hang onto the aluminum molds. Maybe he bought them, maybe they were spares, but he is planning to offer aluminum Chrysler blocks for sale again. BMP has changed to a more modern foundry and has moved to a new facility and changed a lot of tooling. Maybe by late Summer we'll hear some good news. It doesn't seem like Chrysler is interested in the RB engine any more.

Others have tried and failed with replacement iron blocks. They must be hard to cast.

It's been reported here that the owner of Dart, Dick Maskin, was asked directly by a board member if he had plans for a Chrysler block and he replied that the volume just wasn't there.


R.

Oh boy, not again. I've heard about empty promises for a long time now. SMH. If this is who I'm guessing it is...he retired...so I don't think we'll be hearing anything from him again..... And from what I understand, over time this became a normal method of handling inquiries. Sorry to hear that.

Hopefully somebody takes over this business, makes a great product with amazing margins driving them to constantly push improvements, and they make it basically forever. I'll also hope that they really enjoy managing it, because that alone will become a full time job. Can anyone guess the volume vs. tooling/ development cost? How many do you have to sell before you make money?

I talked to Bill Mitchell at PRI, and asked him about the aluminum Hemi blocks. He said that the whole thing is very complicated, much more that one would think. He didn't want to give details on that, or a timeframe, but he did not sound too optimistic.

Edelbrock is producing sbc and bbc blocks--- maybe someday mopar

Everyone would be just better off financially and mentally if they just put chevy engines in their mopars.

The R3 casting boxes have been located, but the holder obviously can’t let them go or produce anything without Fiats blessing.

As of a year or so... maybe longer, there were still mega blocks on backorder status. Funny they hadn’t axed them yet (code NS1...no longer in production).

My way cool parts manager retires next year. Maybe I’ll see if he’ll order like a 100 of them

This guys name was Dale. One of the board members here knew him and his shop in Detroit had machined some blocks for Mopar so he contacted him. He was told “ they are at the machining facility “. Yup, sure they are. Right over in the corner and they will never get done. I’ve got one world block and I’m not selling it anytime soon. Lol.

X2

Maybe SBM, Maybe G3 Hemi, no BBMs market is too small.

Fiat has no interest in past engines, we have to push the aftermarket into it.

Marketing figured there would be a demand for About 700-800 G2 hemi blocks the 1st 2 years and drop off to 120-200 after that.
There was work on a tall deck G3 hemi block but it was decided that the engine would be too wide for any practical retrofit application, not to mention the Intake manifold issues

Unfortunately that's the feedback I've been hearing since '13. He retired and it should be interesting to see who they replace him with, if anyone. I have nothing against the guy, he is a nice person, I like him and would shake his hand if he walked up to me right now, but I 100% disagree with those methods of communicating with folks.

I dont think a 1/4 deck height would make much difference externaly (except the intake witch I think a simple spacer could deal with) but internally it would, you could add 1/4 stroke and 1/8 rod length. At the very least they could give us an iron siamese bore block so we could get more like 4.25 bores, the BGE/hellcat block is almost siamese (the bores are together 1/2 way up). Even with the current limit on displacement they are pretty awesome, they can be built to rev really high and make up for the lack of CID.

There are a two or three vendors casting Ford FE blocks and I can't imagine that the FE market is larger than the Mopar market. I know there are a lot of Ford cars out there but there are not a lot of guys running FE engines. The FE block is pretty close to a Mopar block in a lot of ways so if someone like Bear Blocks can produce a FE block then I don't see any reason a vendor couldn't make Mopar blocks.

I think some of it is just bad luck. For whatever reason the people who so far have chosen to cast Mopar blocks haven't had the talent or the money or the time to make it happen correctly. Cast iron engine blocks are a very well known commodity by now. Millions of them have been cast over the years. The machining process is also well understood. People know what feeds and speeds and tools need to be used to hit the tolerances. It really just boils down to hiring the correct people and throwing enough money at it until the issues are solved.

Don't care

Intake spacer works well with traditional intake angles, remember the G3 intake is horizontal, the 1/4 in in increase results in an engine that is almost 2 inches wider, ask anyone who's tried to stuff a G3 in to an A-body what an extra 2 inches of width would do.
1/4 increase in DH was also the limit before lifter issues were found, it's been over 2 years since this was dropped, I'll have to check some notes as to the actual width and lifter issue.

there is a company looking to do iron block but it's on the back burner, BGE type core with 5.7/6.1 timing gear, angled oil filter mount and would use an LS filter.
4.5 bore center was considered(stock is 4.46), but dropped.

(I removed "Siamese" from the above statement, I had Siamese on the mind when I wrote it)

Bear blocks are casted in South Korea,not that there is anything wrong with where they are casted.
they were working on a 392 hemi block ,..I think that project is over(I'm Not 100% on that)

Like the new casted 409 blocks, the FE's are moving better than you would think.....FE lovers are coming out of the SBF closet , iron block Alum heads ,it's lighter than a 385 series engine by a lot.
the FE intake adaptor has opened up a whole new world for those fud heads.

not my photo

I agree with the Ford FE comments. But not about the 'bad luck'. There's surely some well calculated conspiracies involved with the mopar big block I think. Lots of people still want and would buy a cheap sportsman Mopar (big) block if it was offered!

I think Maskin and Chrysler don't get along very well, have a feeling he will make a Mopar block only over his dead body.

Indy should try lower their price on their aluminum block and they will sell a lot more of them, plus will kill off all of their competition altogether that are supposedly "making a BLOCK". Do us all a favor!!!!!!

The biggest problem I see is everybody but a few want all these add ons. Make a copy of the original block and live with it! That's the reason the FE blocks are being made, it's just like the original. Quit trying to make a Mopar 440-426 into BB Chevy.

Just my opinion, but you will see Satan himself dress up and walk into church before Indy will ever lower their prices a nickel. They've watched how many others flail around and swirl down the toilet, yet they are still going despite treating customers like dog crap.

There's no thinking about it.

I don't think it would be that hard to build a Mopar block. If BBM can produce FE blocks then they can do Mopar blocks. The blocks are roughly the same in many ways. Deck height, cross bolted mains, etc. I just don't think there is any magic involved.

If I was willing to invest the money (which I'm not) I'd just go visit BBM and talk to them about what it would take to do a Mopar block. I wouldn't do anything tricky, just a reproduction RB block that is thicker and stronger with cross bolted mains.

Okay, I am confused.

Do the Cast Iron Bocks exist or not?

Or is it a case of they exist but setting at a machine shop?

I'm with AndyF... this can't be that difficult. There has been what... 3 different companies now who have designed cast iron Chrysler big blocks since 2008 - Keleno, HP, and MM off the top of my head, and yet we have NOTHING...

Maybe I'm wrong

Tony does not play well with anyone. And don't give a crap about doing anything themselves.

After reading 3 pages. All I can say is WOW! Hey Poly, do you care?

Mopar burned him when he helped do initial development of the Pro Stock Truck program. Some early W8 castings were done by Dart.

So those after market blocks were too expensive to buy one.....Now nobody makes one....

What are the SS guys doing for Hemi's?

Sounds like our options are getting fewer by the minute....

Heck the newer 6.1 blocks are tough to find....

Can't race without blocks....When I was looking for blocks, mire than one manufacturer said to put a shevy in it. I know guys that have, never thought I would have to consider it.

how fast do you want to go???? We have local area shops punching out low 9 second and 8 second Mopar wedges and Hemis every week in the Pittsburgh area that race every week at Keystone. Tom Hemphill, Tim Bowman, and Bob George Racing build these engines in their sleep. Tim is a one man show and he had 5-6 Indy blocks over the winter. Not bad for an old retired guy. He retired from a local tech school late last year and can now live in his shop full time. Each one of the shops listed above can build anything from street beasts to track monsters. Gene Nagie’s Dart pounds out 4.60’s and is at Keystone every week bracket racing. Quit being a “negative Nancy” and join the fun.

Gene Nagie’s Dart pounds out 4.60’s and is at Keystone every week bracket racing. Quit being a “negative Nancy” and join the fun.


what's he running for a drivetrain gen-hemi or ?.

Now I am being negative......Well, I will go somewhere else then. Have a nice day...

Indy headed wedge engine.

Here he is racing my Son Yesterday 5-5-18.


https://www.facebook.com/michael.r.bright.9/posts/1923563737656489

I'm sorry you are so touchy but I say it like it is. It isn't "black magic" to make what is available for Mopars to make them run. Heck an edelbrock headed wedge runs high 8's at Keystone too and we aren't some east coast super track. open your eyes and you shall see.

There are also Cleveland blocks being made.... I have no idea how many they'd sell but I dont imagine them being a high volume seller, even because in part blocks already exist for SBF - many cleveland builds are just based on windsor blocks that dart and world make.

And they are available in cast iron apparently, as well as CGI, and aluminum. I assume the same foundry handles all three castings.

http://www.tmeyerinc.com/product/track-boss-cleveland-block/

Here are some pics of the cleveland and the foundry that casts them.








This aussie A body won best of show at the biggest annual mopar show with a HP Performance built Gen2 Hemi using the HP block, so when it comes to alu there is also HP along with the others that everyone here knows about.




https://www.whichcar.com.au/features/hemi-powered-chrysler-vg-valiant-hardtop

Most Ford guys in Australia are running a Cleveland engine, so those blocks would sell alright over here. Arrow are making a Cleveland block as well.

RE: Tim Meyer Inc. Track Boss

Tim Meyer posts on Facebook and two days ago posted the latest info on the Track Boss 351C. He's got Track Boss #1 built and on the dyno. The engine is doing its shakedown runs.

It's a far cry from having them ready to order.

This is an aluminum block. Iron blocks? Maybe around the corner. Now Tim Meyer is a competent machinist and engine builder, who has a financial base as an existing concern. He has a better than average chance of getting at least one of the alloys into production. But I'd be willing to bet it won't be all three.

R.

^ OK.... so far from a done deal on the iron cleveland.

Does anyone know if these cast steel blocks exist or are they a unicorn? ....

http://www.hpperformancellc.com/store#!/Cast-Iron-Hemi-Block/p/12528197/category=2880288

Obviously the alu ones do as theres one in the orange thing I posted earlier.

Trying to put Hemi heads on a wedge specific block is one thing, but the other way around doesnt seem entirely impossible to me looking at those blocks, move the inner row of head bolt holes on the head, then use a bolt from ontop and a nut in the valley like a hemi... leave the block alone....messy but probably doable with some of the heads.

I talked to him years ago. “ They are almost done” is the word. Just what everyone says. Several alum ones are out with problems. One guy on the board has one and it has problems. I’m sure he will chime in. I’ll be ever surprise if an iron hemi will ever get done.

This right here, copy the original but more meat where needed for strength like bores and cross bolted mains so people have a solid foundation without costing a fortune. This would still give the big dollar guys something to work with also, they can spend the money they would have on a fancier block reworking oiling and adding whatever "features" they deem so important and it gives the lower dollar guys something to work with and not have to pay for all the bells and wistles just because some rich guy wants them. Andy put drysump on a stock block I think, there are (or at least used to be) hemi heads for wedge blocks, external oil pickups can be added, big roller cam journals can be added, lifter bores moved especially if they add a little extra meat in the valley. I think the problem is all these companies try to do a block from scratch so it costs a fortune and they never happen. Start simple and add features once you get blocks flowing.

I'm no authority, but I do know Ford trucks used FE motors to at least 1976 (390's), and the truck market was and is huge. Before diesels, the big blocks ruled the 4x4 trucks in general.

I'll ask the question again.

Does the new Iron blocks even exist?

Yes they do i spoke with the supplier on sunday and he told me theres about a 5 week lead time as of right now
I mentioned a guy with his block at Best Machine they were going over it to see if there was any issue only thing they said was oil pump bolt holes are alittle off and oil pump mounting holes will need to be opened up to line it up and the lifter bores had a taper
I attached a pic of his block which he picked up from Best of the weekend.

Damn, that looks heavy!!

I don't think poly did that

Seriously... that's one massive chunk o' iron.

The mega blocks sure as heck weren’t light. Lol. If you want strong and light buy an aluminum block. Ohhhh that’s right, you lose horsepower with an aluminum block. Lmao.

Last I heard, BB Mopar aluminum blocks are a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a foundry.

That's not what my eyes have witnessed.

If they're quality blocks, that's good to hear.

Yeah but taking up to 200 lb off the nose of your car that's got to be worth something.....

but if it holds together are you going to complain ?
As an aside , are the aluminium ( Indy , World ? ) good enough for daily driving or more a race only item ?

Tex

My Indy aluminum block is in a 100% street car, makes 960 hp. No problems yet.....

Thank you sir, that's a beautiful sight!

Is this block going to be a Mopar block or is this strictly an outside source?

thanks

Tex

"We are currently in the middle of some foundry updates and at the same time decided to use the down time to upgrade the tooling to improve the casting quality. Projected ship dates to begin in late Summer 2018."

https://www.billmitchellproducts.com/mopar-aluminum-big-block/