Crate Motor Experience (so far)

Postby Todd Hall (Insuranceguy) » 22 Jul 2003 0:00

I purchased a crate 360, stroked to 402 from Mopar, who has Cummins build the actual motor. In looking at all the online photos, none of them show the motor with anything other than a stock oil pan. When the motor shows up, it's got an oversized oil pan. So much so that it hangs 2 inches below the k member. When Lawrence of http://www.mopartsracing.com called Cummins, they said they did not put high capacity oil pans on, and that there were many happy Challenger owners that run this motor. When I sent a picture of the motor to Lawrence, who really is a good guy, he was as surprised as the Cummins people. Moral of the story is that it takes damn near as much time putting together that is supposed to be done, as it does to build one from scratch. Costs about the same too.Image
Todd Hall (Insuranceguy)
 

Crate Motor Experience (so far)

Postby Andy Neal (Tweety) » 22 Jul 2003 1:18

Todd all I can tell you about the whole crate motor deal (and I know PLENTY!) is that MP are no longer producing the Hemi's they haven't made the RB's for a while and I rather suspect the stroker smallblocks are not long for the world either.
They build them up out of all the right bits, but sometimes it's not quite in the right order, if I were you mate I would check every last little bit of that thing BEFORE you fire it up. Now way back whne they started this the RB motors were blowing up all over the place, Rick E-berg from Mopar Action blew three up on the dyno before finally admitting defeat. Then MP recalled them and sent them up to Mr B's who then got 50 hours labour a piece to put them right.
Now the 575HP rated RB's made on the dyno an average 100 less HP than the advertised # and that was with a trick carb and race gas!
Now I for one cannot see Chrysler's new owners standing for ths kind of behaviour for very long, can you?
Do yourself a favour mate, take the pan off and at least check the bearing clearances before you fire it up.
Stay in touch
A
Andy Neal (Tweety)