Dart Cast Iron Gen 3 Hemi Block

It looks like the Dart cast iron Gen 3 Hemi block is available.

PRI quotes:

“This block will change the game,” promised Mike Sanders. “We’ve added extra cooling capacity and changed the oiling system.”

The new block will not allow MDS (cylinder deactivation) but will be available with or without provisions for variable valve timing (VVT). It also comes with steel four-bolt mains in all five locations and will be available in either a 9.250- or 9.285-inch deck. Maximum bore will be 4.250-inch.

“Now you can build nearly a 500-cubic-inch Gen III Hemi,” Sanders noted. —Mike Magda

Glad someone stepped up and made a siamese bore for these but it looks like a step back from the factory 6 bolt mains? Is the material that much better that they are not needed?

All of the hemi blocks I have messed with were 4 bolt mains. But I could be off base here.

Gen3 hemi is 4 bolt. Must be confused with a ls.

You post a lot about building G3s, have you never been into the bottom end of one?
They are all 2 bolt caps with cross bolts

I believe they are referring to the cap bolts not the spade bolts. MMX sells a cap with 4 bolts and 2 spade bolts. Which most refer to as a 6 bolt cap. Maybe I'm wrong but that is what I thnk.

Good, maybe this even leads to new intake and cylinder head options as well.

Not sure why he keeps saying "can bore to 4.250" 4.20 is max on the block, a 4.250 bore will leave only .105 between cylinder bores......Not good even for siames blocks....... bottom end of the block is thicker where the Main studs go in no "shelf" tpe casting... still only two in the cap and two cross bolts....the ONLY 6bolt G3 (4 cap ,2 cross) were the Mclaren Alum block for the ill fated 5.0 liter program in 04-06 ...

There are some big advantage with this block
1) it has two extra Head bolts , per cylinder one @ 12 o'clock and one @ 6 o'clock. Like some of the Aftermarket LS blocks........ it's a true 6 head bolts per cylinder can you say 30+lbs of BOOST
2) the Water Jacket it's more like the BGE/Hellcat and less like the Eagle 5.7 and the 5.7/6.1 block.
3) the Lifter oil galleys(passages) connect all 8 on the same bank...the OEM blocks are split in to 4 sections of 4.
4) unlike the BGE block is it a true siamese bore, BGE block has a ridge from the floor of the water jacket up to about an inch in height connecting the cylinders.
the deck is .10 thicker then the 6.1 block @ the 9.25 deck height and .135 thicker then the stock BGE at the 9.285 Height.

Bad news...it's still tight in the crank area for anything over 4.125 stroke....4.08 still needs a little notching for the oil cross passage on the passenger side rear oil drain back and major surgery for the 4.125 and larger stroke.

for the NON-VVT crowd it's basically a BGE version of the old 6.1 block.....Better cooling, thicker deck and cylinder walls that don't move around above 18lbs of Boost. .(it's the Block you Need Dragula for your Eddelbrock heads)
HP wise...BGE's will go 1500 with good caps. and 4.10 max bore, 1300/1400 with 4.125-4.165 before the break...these should go 1800 at least with a good tune and 4.10 bore..not sure how well they'll take a 4.20 bore and BIG boost.

BMP Alum Block is going to drop some time around late October and early December....that will be a real game changer .......I haven't talked to Darren @ KB in a while I know they are close to releasing their block.
Future is looking a little brighter for the G3 crowd.......there will be 4 Alum block options this time next year...now how long will they stay in production.....I don't know.

Next up is a Head that'll flow....VERY well....I mean VERY well...Think AJPE or Frankenstein P48 Hemi well....and true 6 bolt around the cylinder and uses 5.60-5.80 length valves......Not 5.14

Your right, I just got done building an aluminum 3.5 V6 that had 6 bolts and had that in mind. I was doing a bunch of research thinking about building it into a 4.0 V6 so that was on my brain. Still seems like it would have been a good idea for a motor that could go past 1000 HP like a new hemi block should be able to go.

I might have to order one of those, although, I would want to run a 4.25 crank in it if possible.

4.25 crank fits , lots of work, but it fits with the 4.20 Bore and a 4.25 crank puts you@ 471 CI

That would be a beast of a G3

See the new pushrod Fleet engine by ford?
445 CID
4.220 bore and a 3.9 something stroke.
It looks like a cross between a G3 and LS lol
I know nobody cares but maybe Fiat will respond to this?
But I'm thinking that the current G3 BGE casting would not support a big bore. It would need a total redesign.
Crate engine starts at 7,800.00 IIRC

The hemi valve arrangement don't need as big a bore as a wedge to flow the same amount of air, they could easily extend the 392 deck a half inch and stroke to 4.0 and bore to 4.125 to get close enough and make it industrial kind of sturdy, make the displacement come out to 426. This taller deck configuration would also allow even longer intake runners for more TQ and with existing BGE heads make plenty of power to compete with the ferd. Small bore long stroke is also a better way to get past emissions.

Ford pretty much owns the commercial market that engine is used for, shuttle buses, RV's etc. Dodge gave up on that market years ago so I wouldn't expect much from them.

I wonder if this is cast grey iron or the better cast ductile iron?
Time to make the call to find out I guess

Both have their advantages,

Gray dampens vibrations better, machines better, cheaper to manufacture , better thermal conductivity,(transferring combustion heat to water jacket) oddly , its stiffer then ductile, which also means it's brittle compared to Ductile.
Ductile ...has a greater tensile strength, impact and fatigue resistance
High end cylinder sleeves are made from Ductile, while stock or lower end sleeves are gray ... "dry sleeves" are almost always made from gray, a lot of your "wet" sleeves are made from ductile.

The G3 blocks have one of the higher nickel contents in the OEM engine blocks, highest of any Chrysler block made,.

"dodge" was competitive with the Iron V10 but once DCX took over the writing was on the wall ..I'm guessing they felt it was money wasted to pursue that market any longer....I don't agree

Every .25 inch you raise the deck height of the G3 block it widens the G3 1 inch.....

Mercedes removed Dodge vans and replaced them with sprinters, at least in the shuttle and RV world.



There are some ram based RV's coming back though, but diesels

So 471 cubes at 4.25 stroke and 457 cubes at 4.125 stroke seems like the realm we should be in.....Would love one with a high ram and two 4150 TBI's on it....Talked with Kyle at Dart Machinery, and he thinks it could be out early next spring is best guess. He said the plandemic really messed up the timing of the release of it, but they are still moving forward. Pricing should be inline with their other CI offerings....So its a go!

Plandemic :
haha:

I hear yah brother!

Is there a consensus that lack of oiling at idle is what tends to wipe cams and lifters on Gen3's? I'm very interested in these new blocks and following this thread and the redesigned oiling and curious if these are problem solvers. Thanks.

Do you plan to sit in stop and go traffic on the freeway for an hour a day in the middle of the summer, with 5-10,000 mile old dollar store oil, and the engine idling at 500 RPM? If you answer no to these questions, you'll likely never have an issue. I'd bet that low idle speed alone, in an attempt to save fuel and emissions, is the only important factor to camshaft and lifter splash oiling. Set the idle at 750, run decent oil, and never worry again, IMHO.

It seems to me from all the reading that there are an inordinate amount of failures in cars and trucks that don't see excessive idling (non fleet vehicles) and are not treated to low grade oils. Every single Mopar forum you can look on has multiple threads on camshaft/lifter failure discussions so there's seems to be something to it other than setting idle to low, cheap oil and excessive idling. I ask because some of these after market engine blocks could be solutions and I'm interested.

Hydraulic lifters do require good oil flow and changes as the holes in them are small.

BS - they've been selling these engines by the hundreds of thousands for close to 15 years, do not let 30~ loud mouth complaints (90% by people looking for free replacements) sway your view

I do reputation management - everyone scrolls to the bad reviews and ignores the thousands of good ones, dont fall into that trap. There's guys on here with 250K looking to rebuild and make more power, ask them about reliability

I do take the complainers with a grain of salt because Mopars are the red headed step child in the industry. I think the Gen3 is a wonderful engine and have owned several so please don't get me wrong. I want to take one way into the future as in for the rest of my life. I'm in law enforcement and there does seem to be a bit of higher failures than other engines (although Fords have a ton of issues themselves!!!) from the idling I suppose but if I develop an issue on my '10 Charger I want to be ready and informed to do an upgrade

No consensus on idling causing it! I have seen it in plenty of engines that do not see excessive idling. If that was the issue how do you explain the fact the millions of early engines with the same oiling system and lots of idling that did not have this problem?

The only things that are basically consensus or should be is that

1 The problem is the lifter quits rolling and ruins the cam, not the cam going bad.
2 it did not start until the eagle era engines ruling out the basic design of the oiling system.
3 Some people say it is MDS fault but again lots of non MDS vehicles have the problem including my 2011 ram 2500 with NO-MDS and lots of early engines had MDS but there were no lifter failures.


A different block will not solve the problem, it is a lifter problem.

Thanks Dave and this does seem to be what I'm reading the most. Eagle Heads was beginning (although dropping a cyl seemed to improve with) and the lifter seizing wipes out the cam. But a different lifter doesn't solve issue because it's a matter of getting oil to the lifter.

All this said I still think it's a great engine I just wish the oil to one or two lifters issue could be solved with relatively easy mods.

Getting back to the block discussion...

What platform will the block be based off of, anyone know? 6.1, 6.2, or 6.4?

I am not sure, but the fact that the block can be machined for both VVT and Non-VVT cams is pretty forward thinking. I would guess that Dart took the best from each block to create this version.

larrympar360,

If I am reading this right, I believe HotRodDave is saying that it is not an oiling issue. If there was, then the 03-08 hemi would have the same problem since the oiling system is the same. This makes sense to me as well. Another possible contributor could be weak or too stiff valve springs. There were some issues with valve spring breakage for a while. The Eagle 5.7 has a more aggressive cam compared to the early hemi and had a different spring. Just another variable to add to the mix.

Yes it does make sense. In some ways I wish it was oil starvation to one or two lifters and additional oiling passages could be added aftermarket blocks. I want to hang on to my '10 till the end and building off a new block would definitely be an option. Right now I think very frequent oil changes are best idea in keeping my stock one going.

6.4 water jacket, with a lot of Iron to machine around the 1st cam journal.



As for the Lifter argument , lack of oiling is part of the issue, the other is the VVT it's self, computer programing. there's a lot to it, kind of like a perfect storm deal....one of the dealer mechanics I know who's done a few was showing me one 2500 where the issue was the lifter yoke cracked, the other one that stood out to him was a 2011 Manual Challenger , that had MDS lifters in a non-MDS engine...bad valve springs was part of the earlier issue, wrong springs ,

FCA/Stellantis has done a enough spintron testing to know what the problem is and how to fix it ...but they can't it's an Emissions function device and you can't remove them, you can only add to them.