(All communications to the field have to pass the scrutiny of General Counsel (legal department).).
Totally unrelated to the current discussion at hand.

Part of the reason for the current situation - no blocks, missing prints is poor management.
Zippy nailed it. PG = totally oblivious to the real potential of the Mopar Performance line. And a few of his direct reports too.

As I said before here - poor management and no “car” people running the program. PG’s recent and only contribution - giving a Hellephant away to Worman. What a joke.

I have zero faith in big companies these days. I don't think many of them or their CEO's know how to do the right thing anymore.I could tell you stories from all my years at GM and the money just flushed away. I think they are all in it for a couple of years, and then like a changing of the guard, its sold off or broken up or.what ever........I hate what the Chrysler execs did to the company, and if I could, I would beat them all with a stick.....

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.......With that said, we, just like the chevy and ford guys, need to get the aftermarket to support us. We need to order in volume, and we need to quite being so hung up on a purple cam and iron heads....This is the only chance we have at maintaining our presence in the sport.

I was a block engineer at GM for 7 years, I know what goes into all the machining, and its not easy...I just hope we get a couple manufacturers with blocks this year, or things are going to be bleak.

Things are already bleak. And it is not the iron head and purple shaft crowd. I sell both and I cannot remember that last ones I sold of either. We have not fixed a set of iron heads in ages. I have a front row view of almost all of the drama with blocks and believe me is has been bleak for years now. This market is TINY.
I know everyone thinks in terms of the Carlisle's and Josh Kings Norwalk race and those are great shows but they are the biggest of their kind anywhere. I have been coast to coast for years and the people interested in this stuff keeps getting smaller and smaller. If you look nation wide at the big shows (Daytona turkey Rod Run, Charlotte Autofair, Oceanside MD, Pigeon Forge TN and loads of others the Mopar market is tiny. Then throw out the restoration and the street rod type guys who stock stuff suits just fine and you are left with the SUB 9.50 Crowd. I think you can run pretty well with stock blocks to that level in a normal drag car. SO even at the larger Mopar only events you cannot fill a quick 16 with legit cars easily. I know, I have tried.

Look around at the next Mopar drag show you go to . And now a good number of the faster cars on the property are Gen 3 guys. The chevy guys have firmly embraced the LS stuff and they are going fast with it. We are just blessed with some of the most expensive cars to build and run. Think about it. You most likely know almost all of the fast Mopars in your area if you have one. It is pretty rare when one just shows up at the track that you have not seen or heard about before,
Most of our customer base has been doing this stuff for decades and a lot are simply aging out of it. I talk pretty often with other engine guys and guys the actual numbers of people buying aftermarket blocks is pretty small. Look how many years it took Chrysler to sell off the R blocks. Some of those sat around for almost a decade or more. No real demand. Now the head guys have finally given us some choices and we have no blocks. Edelbrock has hemi and SB victor heads that were at least 20 years late. Trick Flow finally gets around to heads and they are pretty nice but no blocks.
The question then becomes how fast do you expect to go with 50 year old junkyard motors? You could build an 8 second race car with a stock block, maybe even a seven second one with a really good car. How fast does it need to go? 1000 Hp gets thrown around a lot and even the CHevy and Ford guys have trouble getting blocks at that level. Are market is small and gets even more fractured with all the different crowds each with their own wants and wishes for a block. Hemi, lowdeck, tall deck this bore size or that. I order parts for and build these every day and no two are almost ever the same. Everyone wants to be different (its why you like mopars to begin with) but the chevy guys are happy with their 632 crate motors that all have the same parts. Not us. We are almost loathe to do it the same way as anyone else. Often to our demise. Todd

I've never understood the Mopar block situation. There are several vendors who make blocks for FE Ford engines and there is no way the FE was ever as popular as the Mopar big block. You can go to a bunch of races and car events without ever seeing a FE engine but Mopar big blocks are fairly common. So there is something else going on than economics.

Personally I think that Mopar messed up the whole situation by doing such a poor job at making blocks. Had they stayed out of it, the aftermarket would've filled the void. But with Mopar stepping on everyone's toes the aftermarket backed off. Unfortunately Mopar screwed things up so bad that now nobody wants to get involved.

But I don't think the situation is all that bad for hot street guys or the 9 and 10 second crowd. A stock block will handle 700 hp for a few seasons and these days it is easy to make 700 hp with a set of Trick Flow heads, a ported intake, 12:1 compression and a modest solid roller. Basically order the parts from Summit and bolt them together and hit the track. That kind of engine costs about $15,000 and it should last several seasons if the machine work is correct. 700 hp will put an A body into the 9's and maybe even a B body if a little weight is taken off the nose and a good suspension is put under it. I was just at the track the other day with a customer car like that. It has a stock block 505 with Trick Flow heads and a Holley EFI system. Runs 9's and with the EFI setup he never has to open the hood. Turn the key and go racing. So that isn't a bad deal.

I thought Keith Black was bringing back Hemi and Wedge blocks?

Be nice

Please don't do this, lets have some hope

All communications to the field have to pass the scrutiny of General Counsel (legal department


So funny! Dow Corning said the same thing just before their $$$ billion loss and bankruptcy.

Wet dreams. What ever happened to all those blocks we saw pictures of on Facebook being delivered to Best Machine

To my understanding (I do the best I can but of course am possibly incorrect), when royal oak boring (old machine shop) quit, there were several
old raw castings left. Years later, jnb machining was contracted to finish them and use
them up.

The recent fakebook pictures are from that last run (old castings, new machine shop).

Remember, “build it and they will come”?

Well, I firmly believe this a case of the opposite......”don’t build it...... and they will go”.

It’s hard to sell what you don’t have.
By not having blocks available, a lot of people looking to build high level motors will simply move on to something that is available.

That’s what I’d do if I were in that position.

Then, once they see how drama free it is getting the basic parts necessary to build a 1000hp motor...... many of them will be gone for good.

I'm sure lots of people will disagree, but if there is one focus it should be Hemi blocks

very reasonable reaction to anyone who makes the claim that KB blocks will soon be readily available.




try saying that to one of the many customers who put money down and got nothing as promised

Disregard my post in the other thread.

as predominantly Ford guy, I disagree, I see as many FE's if not 2 to1 ratio out at my local tracks and cruise nights as I do BBM I can tell you from 1st hand experience that new FE blocks are not cheep, I have as much in to my 496FE Bear motor block build as I do my 408 G3 , both have about the same nearly identical cam and compression and that G3 makes the same power , both make about 690ish,

There are a lot of FE's in truck pulling and replica Cobra's.

I agree with the bottom of your post, most of the mopar guys I know have been well in to the low tens with half the parts that my Chevy and Ford buddies needed.

INDY BLOCKS

ARENT THEY AVAILIBLE????

LOL

Been waiting on some since May.......I did hear today that Bill Mitchell is getting their stuff in one sock to make some more.
Todd

The Gen III motors are where its headed. Same or more power than a Gen II and 100lbs lighter. Sorry but the Gen II is going to die off except for a few die hards like 409s,421s and 455s. Sure they make parts but how many do you see?

I’m into the R3/W8 Stage..... it’ll be my last hurrah.