So i've been up and down the bores, concentrating on the thrust side of the bores, so far the thinnest spot ive found is .188 on cylinder #5 half way down. Engine is stock bore with about .007 of wear. Any other magic spots to check?

That sounds almost to good to be true, but for your sake I hope it is, I'd double check the calibration on the meter and recheck but good for you if its that good

There is no magic. In this case, it is what it is... You hunt around till you find the thin spots. Then after you find them you try to rationalize that the thin spots "aren't that bad" and "how many more blocks do I need to test?"


Good Luck

Haha, yeah i kept checking the calibration slug.. Spent some more time and found an area that is .135 in cylinder 4. Everything on the thrust side looks to be pretty thick.

Check both sides, the major and minor thrust sides, if you end up with more than .140 on either side after boring use it, I would and do

135 isn’t THAT BAD but it doesn’t HOLD A CANDLE to the earlier 440s or the INFAMOUS industrial 413 block !

I saw one that had just a touch under 250 !

I've seen some Mopar stock BB.B and 426 Hemi blocks that I have sonic tested have .350 on side an .0120 on the other
Most of the early street hemi blocks are decent, some are excellent But most of those are taken now
I built one new Hemi Mega block that was rough bored to 4.180 and it wasn't thick enough for me to go above 4.250 final bore with a Roots 10:71 on pump swill, we increase the stroke to 4.375 instead of going to 4.310 bore or bigger
That motor made 927 HP at 7300 RPM on CA pump swill with 7.5 lbs. of boost
The owners chassis wouldn't hook 700 HP, let alone 900+ HP It was a real tire spinner

I think this block will be a good one, thicker than some other blocks ive tried the tester on.

May not be an issue but you really should be calibrating your tester on the block you are checking, use an area that you can measure with a Mic to compare to the sonic tester is recommended.

Yeah did that on the mount ear, and also on a mycom compressor cylinder sleave that could be measured with a caliper to see if the cylindrical shape affected the reading. Its reasonably accurate.

Sounds good, hope you have good luck with it, pretty decent block, they can be hard to find

On that year block, check and double check your tester. If made in China don't trust it. I had a 400 block tested at the machine shop and it showed the thinnest spot to be just under .250. Had it bored .040 over. Assembled a killer short block. But ran across a killer deal on a KB low deck block. So I sold the short block. It never made it out of the dyno room, several of the cyl's were paper thin. Still feel bad about that deal. Moral of the story, don't trust the sonic checker. If possible find someone with a known good tester and recheck. If it sounds too good to be true. It usually is not true.

http://www.440source.com/blockinfo.htm
good info

Offset bore it. But you might lose 2 HP