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The Elephant In The Room: unloading the load from a B-body.

Halfway there with the first polish. I will have to sand a few spots again to rid 'em of casting marks. Lots of small crevices and edges carefully being sanded with a ten step process. White tape in the middle of the handle lever is there to protect the fine engraved lines while sanding.
Believe it or not, Passing the time sanding while at America's favorite pass time events; baseball games. All for the sake of 10 karat aluminum. LOL.

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So the word on the street is that 440 Source is going to be producing and potentially shipping their first clean slate design cast iron 440 blocks by the end of this year. Supposedly these will be in full production by next spring. This is huge news for the Mopar hobby and everyone should be doing cartwheels down the block in celebration.

As you'd figure, they've added a lot of strength to the block and are claiming it will be able to handle anything you can throw at it and more. It's going to have four cross-bolted mains, .25" cylinder walls and denser castings. That's amazing in and of itself but in the context of this thread, the block is going to be HEAVY. A factory 440 block weighs 230 lbs. Due to all the added strength, this 440Source block will weigh 300! You read that right - 70lbs over the already porky stock block. At some point let's hope they think about making a low deck version which could help shave some heft. Maybe a small block down the road too but I won't hold my breath on that.

To me, this is an interesting juxtaposition. Here we are being presented with the opportunity to obtain last engine block anyone will likely ever need but at the same you're adding a bunch of weight to the front of the car. Will the power potential "outweigh" the added mass?

Discuss.
 
rmchrgr said:
So the word on the street is that 440 Source is going to be producing and potentially shipping their first clean slate design cast iron 440 blocks by the end of this year. Supposedly these will be in full production by next spring. This is huge news for the Mopar hobby and everyone should be doing cartwheels down the block in celebration.

As you'd figure, they've added a lot of strength to the block and are claiming it will be able to handle anything you can throw at it and more. It's going to have four cross-bolted mains, .25" cylinder walls and denser castings. That's amazing in and of itself but in the context of this thread, the block is going to be HEAVY. A factory 440 block weighs 230 lbs. Due to all the added strength, this 440Source block will weigh 300! You read that right - 70lbs over the already porky stock block. At some point let's hope they think about making a low deck version which could help shave some heft. Maybe a small block down the road too but I won't hold my breath on that.

To me, this is an interesting juxtaposition. Here we are being presented with the opportunity to obtain last engine block anyone will likely ever need but at the same you're adding a bunch of weight to the front of the car. Will the power potential "outweigh" the added mass?

Discuss.
Click to expand...
I think a fairly decent power level can outWEIGH the extra weight with peace of mind attached.
Some cars could use that extra pork upfront such as DVW's masterful '64 that honestly likes to up its nose at everybody. LOL.

My car can't afford that surplus. It can compete to a certain degree because of the lack of weight up front and the factory rear end suspension design, whereas a coil over linked or Calvert bar setup probably won't mind the weight.
Glad that at least something is coming down the pipe to relieve the stress from the old stocks.

I wish some like 440 Source would produce a down to earth fully water jacketed aluminum block that could operate in REAL WORLD ways without all the expanding or contracting distortions, then again what is there to be expected out of the light weight alloy. I'll take the small horse losses of an aluminum block over the iron version just to be easier on parts and maintenance. Inconsistency is what shy's most racers away from an aluminum piece. Street rats don't care of consistency just as long as the thing hauls.

I wonder what grade of aluminum is used for the 426 Hellephant and Corvette LS7 blocks.

Sheeeiiit, if people only knew how hard it is too rid the frontend of 70 Lbs.
 
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Keep an eye out for what perhaps may be an aluminum version of this bumper. This image was borrowed from the net just for identification purposes, but an aluminum version will be a challenge to both accurately make and polish to perfection.
The stainless steel version that it is trying to replace weighs about 7 Lbs compared to the factory 20+ pounder. Aluminum version may be at more or less 5 Lbs.

Fingers crossed if there is a way of hammering the ends into shape, but most importantly enough time for the whole thing to be created between now and November where it will make its debut at the Muscle Car And Corvette Nationals in Chicago.

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Trying in between a lot of life and work to finish the drivers side inner door panel. In this case, the last pair of Legendary A990 panels attached to their hand made aluminum top door trim. The whole piece is light compared to the more plush civilian panels and arm rests that come on civilian Dodges. I held a lot of patience in my back pocket with these because the only other suppliers of such inner panels is Joe Suchy and probably on back order.

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Badvert65 said:
Wait, what makes the stainless steel bumper so much lighter than the OE bumper?
Is it actually weightless steel?
Click to expand...
It is thin gauge and yet rather strong. The capped ends are removed from a real deal factory bumper and then introduced to the center section. I'll find the notes with the weight differences and repost later on. There's a picture of its construction somewhere in my Rockford Files
 
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