I've been looking at doing an aluminum VG block for some time and I'm to the point of seeing who else might be interested. First off I know this isn't for everyone, I fully expect a small number of people who would be interested in this, so I'm not looking at this as a for profit venture... If I can get enough people committed, we will all benefit.
So what I'm proposing is a Cast Aluminum (A356 material) VG30DE engine block with the following upgrades:1) thicker main webbing for increased bottom end strength
2) 4 bolt steel (1045 material) main caps on all locations (fasteners included)
3) wet cylinder sleeves similar to Darton MID with increased bore potential (bore size limited by coolant holes in cylinder heads).
4) Possibly skirted bottom end (like LS engines) to allow cross-bolted mains... the con with this is a custom oil pan would be required. The main goals with this is to increase bottom end strength and to reduce overall weight, with one side-benefit of being able to increase bore size without weakening the block. In general, the stock iron VG block is good for up to 900 WHP before the bottom end reaches its limits. After that point, I question the viability of investing money to make more power with a stock block. I would need to cast at least 20 blocks to get the cost down to a reasonable level (approximately $5700 each). This price spreads the cost of all of the tooling and patterns required to cast along with ancillary parts such as custom sleeves, main caps, main cap fasteners, and possibly head fasteners, dowel pins, oil galley plugs, line-bore machining, etc. At $5700 each, I currently have 2 other people committed to 3 blocks and I am personally going to put my name on 3 so that's 6 already with 14 left to go. There will be limits on payment options (no credit cards) and down payments will be required. If interested, email me. There is another option, Billet - Depending upon who you talk to about doing billet blocks the price varies. I contacted LSM Engineering who is arguably at the forefront of producing custom billet blocks. A rough price estimate based upon a recent VR38 build they did is $16K each with the caveat of a minimum of 4 required on the first build. Unless there are 3 other people out there that think this sounds reasonable, I'm not interested in spending $64K so I can get my aluminum block fixation satisfied.
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