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Theres two things that attract us to muscle cars. one is the classic looks and styling, the other is the legendary engines that were put in them. Weather its a trans am inspired high windin small block or a big displacement torque monster we cant get enough of them. Two of these famous engines are the 426 Hemi and the Cleveland series small block produced by Ford. In this day and age however acquiring these engines has become rather hard on the wallet. Thanks to places like Barret/Jackson the 426 hemi is possibly the most expensive muscle car engine to obtain today. A brand new crate hemi from Mopar costs about $13,000 and finding an actual production 426 hemi, thats complete and re-buildable, can be almost same price it seems.

The Ford Cleveland series engines, while not all were solely put in factory performance cars, had a short production run. Only around 3 years. What attracts gear heads to this style is its canted valve cylinder heads that even stock, could flow a ton of air. The 4V version was hardly even streetable. So while the heads have serious potential, the block has oiling issuses that have to be resolved for high performance applications. Its short production run makes finding good cores hard and the lack of demand leaves little aftermarket support for it.

So whats a guy on a mac n cheese budget to do? Well first the Hemi fix. While we cant find used hemi blocks, we can find good used 440 wedge cores. Theyve been used in performance and daily driver applications, from cars to motor homes so its still possible to get one at a junkyard. A company called Stage V Engineering has developed a Hemi style head that will bolt onto the 440 block. While the 440 block my not be as beefy as the hemi block, it can be buffed up and for the price of a hemi crate engine, you could have an all forged, stroked hemi conversion ready to deliver a hurtin on the tires. For more information on this conversion you can check out Popular Hot-rodding or...

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