Well to be fair to you, the answer to who builds stock displacement engines anymore is probably mostly no one.

I think many prefer a power curve focused on low/lower rpm.

I'm the opposite. I like short gearing and higher rpm, so kept stock crank, ported the heads, single plane intake, higher compression and solid roller.

Dana 60 is better than a 9inch…. Change my mind!

Had it for free for a year with Hagerty. Did they renew it so you can get another year? I never found a link or email on how to get another year free.

Can you subscribe at all? Some folks outside the U.S. cannot get it for any price.

I wish you all would open the boarder up and let the racers come see us.

Here's the spec's on that crane cam they used in that article. I run it too with a stage V single plane 2-4 manifold. Dyno pull needed to go up to at least 7500rpm.

I guess the outcome was as one could expect.
anyway it sucks not being able to watch it.

Hopefully you ran more valve spring pressure than what the cam card called for
There is no way I would run solid roller cam in a hemi with only 450 Lbs. open pressure, maybe a hydraulic roller, bot never a solid roller with that little pressure

Some details from the test

the 440 was 9.5:1 compression with 906 heads milled to reduce volume from 87cc to 83cc and a valve job back in 2001.
the 426 was 9:1 with standard iron crate motor heads as cast

On the Hemi, they claimed to be running Ray Barton's valvetrain setup reduced to 1.5 ratio rockers so actual valve lift would be similar

The 440 had the edelbrock six pack manifold
The 426 had a marine style dual plane with two Holleys

I think its important to point out that one engine was built down while the other had a bit of help to make the test more..."equal".

He said on the show that the engine came out of a car he had, never mentioned it being a crate engine.

They even showed the car on the show.

So glad you wedge guys had no say so when Chrysler decided to build the HEMI. Really could that wedge run 1 2 3 4 at Daytona in 64?

At the 7min mark onward he said it was a very early crate Hemi.

This thread did not go in any direction I had anticipated. So HEMI's are junk? Suddenly I'm a man without a country. Without the HEMI residing as the supreme power in the universe I have some soul searching to do.


Jokes aside. I wasn't planning to debate the merits of Motortrend on Demand.


More curious for opinions on cam specs. 549/541 lift seems healthy to me. Never having built or owned a HEMI can't say from experience but would make sense to me that it would need a different cam profile than a wedge at the same lift? Maybe I misunderstood what cams they actually used in the dyno session? Sounded like they were as identical as possible.

Indeed.

We still have time to stop all this Gen 3 Hemi nonsense and re-engineer a head that makes some power.

Like I mentioned earlier

The 440 - 6 came out of a 1971 Dodge Charger R/T many moons ago

Steve Dulchich first car he said - That was the car shown on the episode of Engine Masters

It will go back into the car he said after all these years at some point - He pulled the 440 - 6 out when he was a youngster , one of his first engines he rebuilt and played with



The 426 Hemi is a Mopar Performance Crate motor circa 1994/1995

It is going into a AMC Gremlin on a future episode of Roadkill

Mopar's first V-8 was a Hemi. The only reason they got away from that design was simple economics. When they needed a horsepower boost, they went back to that design. When they needed a modern V-8 to compete globally, they again turned to the Hemispherical combustion chamber. And today, it is the design of choice for the fastest and quickest vehicles on earth.

Does anyone here believe that the current crop of Demons, Hellcats, and Redeyes would be as fast/efficient with wedges rather than Hemis?

Our wedges are certainly great engines. But the hemispherical combustion chamber that allows for a better valve arrangement is simply much more efficient. And when taken to it's logical extremes, cannot be beat. That continues to be proven over and over again. Any mod or improvement to a wedge head can be trumped by modifications to a Hemi head. The only times that a wedge head wins is when a Hemi head is saddled with half measures.

Now, it is a fair argument that in many applications (actually most applications), the additional complexity and expense of the Hemi design is not worth the trouble given the level of performance being sought. But then the argument becomes performance bang-for-the-buck, not overall superiority. Which is essentially the same decision that Mopar came to in the late 50s.

I thought we were talking about the 440, I may have misunderstood.

i thought the GEN III hemi is not a "true" hemi ?

I'm not smart enough to explain why but I remember Monte Smith always mentioning the Hemi was best suited to boosted applications. For N/A or on spray, a canted valve style head with symmetric exhaust ports was the best option.

As far as I can tell it's the best of both worlds, the quench pads combined with the dome are Engineering brilliance.

It's because of the already "softened" chamber<<< I dislike that terminology--It's scalloped IMO. The HEMI has a factory scalloped chamber that widens the tuning window significantly under power adder applications--Basically the HEMI chamber is a slow burning chamber which is why when you add a second plug--things change so much. Hate to say it but a single plug wide open 170cc chamber is inefficient. J.Rob