Mopar Muscle Association UK

crate motor does what it says on the tin.
if you think the gm 350 is great, take some spare pants on the test drive with the wedge

Evidently they're great if you want to pull them apart and rebuild them before you use them, not that I'm speaking from experience.

Those crate motors don't make the HP advertised (far from it), you gets what you pay for , cheap is dear.

I bought a crate long block 360 and that was OK, but then lots got thrown away - Studded bottom end, etc, and aftermarket heads, cam, etc etc.

If you have a clear view of what you want to achieve, I think it is better to build it from scratch as opposed to paying for bits you won't use.....

yea must admit ive heard block finishing aint all that either

Pete_bedford wrote:yea must admit ive heard block finishing aint all that either

was thinking of going that route till i heard some stories must admit i feel better going the stroker route

not unless he gets a 440 and strokes it

There has been lots of postings on Moparts about crate motors, most of them not good. It is generally accepted that the HP figures quoted by Mopar Performance are very optomistic and are not to be believed. The motors are basically a bunch of off the shelf parts bolted together, sometimes not very well. As a kit of parts, they are fine, as a finished high performance engine, I think not.

well, i might be about to find out...

Depending on the outcome of a trip to an engine builder on Saturday I might be ordering up a 408 stroker small block from Blueprint Engines

http://www.blueprintengines.com/popular ... s&pc_id=55

I've yet to find a bad word said about this company or their products, but still know it's a big risk. But that said, I don't trust many machinists over here having worked in the trade and got back poorly machined stuff from a few.

If you ask on here, people will tell you that to get a comparable engine built in this country will cost you three or four times what a crate will cost, so I'm probably going to take the risk. And you can all laugh at me when I'm sweeping up parts at the Nats

I think when you hear crate engines being slagged off you've got to look at whose doing it, and on a lot of the boards in the States it's competing engine builders - you've got to figure that there's a vested interest there

I think if you're going to race it hard I would definitely get something built here, but if it's for a street strip car a crate is a possibility.

Another option is to buy a short block and heads, manifold etc separately check it all before final assembly, it's not much work to check clearances but if it is all as expected it would be a lot cheaper than having it all built here, especially if you have to find the block etc first...

Aren't we talking MOPAR crate engines here? Assembled in the good ole US of China or wherever?

Sounds like you're getting something better than that Paul?

I think the US machine shops and engine builders are excellent (at least the ones I have seen). I struggle to find a good engine shop in UK and struggle to find a bad one here.

If you were going to buy a ready built motor it may be worth spending a bit more and do what Paul is doing.

I like to think as engines, like a good meal

Crate motors are fine with those that are prepared to accept Supermarket engines. What I mean is they have the same ingredients of a lot of engine builders, but far too often just thrown in the pot.

Where as specialist built are more Ala carte, same ingredients but prepared & cooked as you want.

Both will fill a hunger, but like after good Chinese, an hour or so your still hungry !

As with most things in this world you get what you pay for, as long as you get what your expecting, then there should be no problem which ever route you choose.

I asked Ray Barton to build a Hemi for my Cuda. He built it exactly the way i asked him to, and delivered it to me with full spec, building notes, photo's and dyno run print-outs. I got it in the time he said and it does everything i wanted.

I would recommend Ray Barton to anyone. But there are a lot of companies in the states building 'crate' engines now. Mopar Performance is just one of them. I recommend doing your homework before placing your order.

Quite honestly, I wonder if it's worth re-building an old engine, especially if you've got performance in mind. A new engine can be cheaper, and it's all new.

two 500 inch wedge motors been on the dyno at eda both made approx 430 hp but over 500 ftlb of torque these where both straight out of the mp catalogue cant remember exact figures but both where very close to each other