No doubt you’ve seen many of the updates, full-length features and news articles we’ve published here at Mopar Connection Magazine on the awesome aluminum Hemi blocks coming out of Bill Mitchell Products (BMP Racing) in Edgewater, Florida. Whether you’re Mike Finnegan lifting the wheels on his blown 572 Hemi ’55 Chevy “Blasphemi” or a custom builder assembling a one-of-none custom street machine, BMP Racing has the block to fit your ultimate elephant build.
But what about those without hemispherical cylinder heads? Don’t they get any love? Of course, they do! Bill Mitchell Products’ radical 440 Wedge block is made from the same space-age 357T6 aluminum used for the Hemi engine block, ensuring it’s super lightweight while remaining incredibly strong. Each of BMP Racing’s 440 Wedge Blocks come with a 10.720-inch deck height, a standard camshaft location, .904″ lifters and includes screw-in freeze plugs and cam plug, all dowel pins and pipe plugs
The big difference is the options in bore sizes: BMP offers their aluminum wedge blocks with either a 4.240-inch or 4.490-inch bore. These allow for .010-inch in final machining, ideal for any big bore, big displacement wedge build. Each blocks 142-pounds, saving considerable weight off of the front of your race car or street machine. Equally each block retails for $5,895.75 and can be purchased via PayPal, Venmo or placing an order the old fashioned way.
I bought one of the RB BMP blocks, and it is a great product. Every time I weighed the options for a 700 ft lbs/6XX HP stroker, and considered the cost vs performance, reliability, relatively low maintenance, and power handling “ceiling” I always concluded that it made sense to go with the BMP block. Now I have to wait to build up my fund to put it together as a 541 stroker.