Is this friend of yours driving a race-only car? If it's a race-only engine, you can fill in a portion of the engine's water jacket with Hardblock, an epoxy compound that stiffens the engine block. The downside is, of course, a reduction in cooling capacity. The upside is that in a drage race environment, there's always plenty of time after the race for the engine to shed all that heat it made in the ten seconds or so of hard driving.

If you are going to relegate the car to a trailer only, you could harden your engine to make it support some additional horsepower.

 

i say that about 650-700 hp is where you start cracking 400's... seen it a few times... i know thats not very many times in the big scheme of things, but that seems to bewhere your throwing the dice...

 

I have seen the 400 blocks crack in the cylinder walls anywhere from 650-750 hp in a normal block. I have not seen a hardblocked block crack but then any engine that we built that was really trying to make more than 700hp we automatically went for the aftermarket block for the thicker walls and beefier main webbing. If you plan to run your block harder then I would rock it up to the bottom of the freeze plugs. The heat is concentrated in the top inch of the cylinder and we have actually seen COOLER oil temps from separating the water from the oil with this thick layer of hardblock.

 

since when do you have to gun drill the block? steam hole drill? the aftermarket block still need some machining. $1000 in machine work for the whole shortblock maybe.....probably not if an aftermarket crank and rods were used. but thats not the block. now way he'd have a grand into block machine work. im not saying the stock block is better, but i am suggesting if the power level isnt going much about 600rwhp a stock block will work.

 

motown blocks