I've been watching justmoparjoe do a stock stroke 400 build on youtube. Nothing special, 10:1, E-Street heads, Holley intake, 850 cfm Holley. He took it to the dyno and it made 530 HP? I was impressed. This is the dyno episode but the whole build is on there somewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEHE-_Zho-M&t=2s

Joe's videos are great! Easy to follow. Good advice for anyone building engines. Plus he has many other great automotive talents. I think it was actually a 750. Looking forward to the tunnel ram numbers.

I paid Joe to come down and fix my door windows in my 69 Charger. Joe is extremely talented and does outstanding work. He drove from Arkansas to South of Dallas, Texas to do my car. He and his brother Drew spent 2 days getting everything perfect. I plan on doing more work with him in the future for some of my customers rides. Here is his YouTube video he made when he came down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGbKhLpTWxA&t=884s

I think he relates to a lot of Mopar guys who aren't on an unlimited budget and would rather do the work on their cars themselves. It sure looks like he will take on anything. But when he said he wanted to get 500 HP out of that build I rolled my eyes. I just thought that was optimistic.

You're right, I think it was a 750. And I couldn't believe it made as much power as the house Braswell carb. Braswell is some hi-end stuff.

Just Mopar Joe is awesome and so is his channel. But why any doubt when aftermarket heads were used? The bigger valve better flowing heads are what takes Mopars to the next level. In the old days we ported or paid to have our heads ported- or we ran them as is because the aftermarket didn't recognize Mopars. Nothing being taken away from Joe- but with good quality aftermarket heads and a wise camshaft choice I am not surprised at all with his output. Now if he had used unported 906 346 or 452 heads I would say no way.

Those 330 cfm Trick Flows impress me, but these were only 280 cfm E-Streets, but I guess on a stroke motor they were all it needed. Sometimes you see a combo and it just works. My hat's off to him.

We made that much with an Eddy Head 340+.030 mild street engine.

The bore to stroke ratio and the rod ratio for the 400 are pretty close to optimal for making great HP per cube. What the 400 lacked was any sort of decent compression and quench. So with modern cylinder heads and valvetrain it should produce higher HP/Cube than a longer stroke variant all else being equal.I'm pretty sure the de-stroked 5.5L LS variant they use in the new Z06 Corvtte has a very similar bore to stroke ratio as the 400.

So for the same head flow a 400 will rev higher with less side loading than a 440 due to the lower relative piston speed at any given RPM

I wish I had bought that offset ground 383 crank AndyF had a while back, it was like 3.52" stroke with 2.200" rod journals. and a 6.8" rod would be a great high revving combo at ~423 cubes.

It's just more cost effective to build a small block these days for the same relative HP output.

I do enjoy Joes videos!

B400: 4.34" X 3.375" = 1.29 B/S ratio
LT6: 4.014" X 3.150" = 1.30

big block mopars love more air.so heads and cam was where the power came from.i had a 440 with only indy heads and big roller cam and ran 9.70s 1/4.and it was a stock stroke 440 with flat tops

1.29 to 1.30, pretty close indeed

big block mopars love more air

Which engines don't?

Seems to me that the big bore really helped unshroud the valves.

Didn’t watch, and I’m a bottom feeder chassis dyno kind of a person so I know less than zero.

With that out of the way I’ve always believed a big part of the appeal of the big block mopar is….the whole “trick of the week/best of everything” approach Isn’t needed to run respectable and competitive. Heads are the weak point in a wedge and sounds like he addressed that.

I seem to remember him testing small block stuff on a track with an odd length, After that I stopped paying attention.
Seems like he has some cool projects going and hope he keeps up the good work.

He had a small block in his 68 Barracuda bracket car. He built this 400 to go in it. And yes, he's 1/8 mile in Arkansas.

The problem with a Small block is that it’s still limited by the bore size imo. 400 an easy 4.375

That's very true but that is offset by the small blocks valves that open on the bore center and the superior valve angle, not to mention a port window that is very close to the size of the big block (proportionally larger relative to the displacement)

The coolest things about the big block (to me) are the ease of removing the intake manifold and the fact that you could change out the cam and lifters without having to pull the intake/bathtub.

And the fact that nearly every aftermarket component you can buy for them is made of aluminum, so weight reduction can get the front-end weight down. A 'B' motor can get down very close to the weight of a stock small-block pretty easily.

(around 550)

I believe an Iron small block head actually weighs a pound to 2 MORE than a BB

I think a 400 or 423" (3.5" stroke with 2.200 BBC rod journals) with a set of ported TF 240's would make a really sweet 7500+ RPM combo, perfect for a 5 speed

Dragula,
What's the recipe on your Eddy head 340 ?

I'd like to see the recipe for that one too.