I knew the heads were china castings. You're probably right about the rockers too. I guess we'll see how they hold up.
Progress Thread BluePrint 347 long block engine swap
- Thread starter Sparky714
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Fine from what I've seen for the most part if you don't try to rev them up there, there heavy for a roller rocker, like 250 grams.. Judging by the dyno cut off of 5900 bpe probably sets em up for 6k and under with the valvetrain and hardware..
You must have ordered that,cause on there web page the 347 comes with a standard rotation water pump timing cover ,states so at the very bottom of that page.
Yeah, they need to update their page. It's included with the long block. I thought I was going to have to change it too, until I called and ordered the engine and they told me about it. I ordered direct from BPE , You can't make any changes to the build.
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That's all I'm changing. All my accessories, headers, intake and supercharger should bolt right up. I did have to get a 28oz balancer and flywheel though. I'm also doing full fuel system upgrade.
Maybe but a quick search led me to believe the summit blocks are cast in Germany, whereas BPE has a foundry in Nebraska, according to them. Maybe my info is dated?
I just did some digging too. Even a deep search with ChatGPT comes back inconclusive on the 8.2 Ford blocks. It did find an article that says the Blueprint small block Chevy blocks are cast in Germany, but no mention of Ford. And it did find a few references to them possibly being cast in Indiana. It also found a collaboration between Summit and Blueprint for tooling. So I'm not sure either now. I'll have to email the salesman I dealt with at Blueprint and ask. He was very good at answering any other questions I had.
There's our answer:
" Yes you are correct, all of our new cast blocks including the Ford compatible engines are cast in Germany. Thank you, James Clark Sales Specialist Factory Five Account Manager [email protected]"
[email protected] Email him and ask. He's good about returning emails.Ask about the other parts. Specifically the heads, timing cover, and thermostat housing. Cause those are the ones that I have.
Great info. I like Germany. Lived there for 5 years. Good people. Would much rather pay them than China.
But for your basic 331 or 347 anything north of $1500 just seems insane to me. I just keep hoping BPE will offer them up for sale in that range. When I first heard they were making their own blocks it was a SEMA video and they claimed up to 700 hp safely. I was just hoping they would drop the price being they are not DART. Most likely they will not offer them so its a pipe dream.
You're not wrong. Right now the Summit/BPE block is $2,550 and the Dart SHP is about $2,700. If I was building from a bare block the Dart would be a no brainer. But for the price I paid( $6900 shipped to my door) for a long block, I don't think I could have beat that. I looked at machining my stock block, rotating assembly, cam, heads timing chain ect. and this was just to good to pass up. And it's been run on a dyno and comes with a warranty. Granted, I may do some things to it that voids the warranty, but I'll cross that bridge if I come to it
Yeah that was specifically for my situation as I want to swap over everything from my 331. The stock block is the limiting factor in my combo as it is but I can get more out of iit by moving to a solid roller. The real issue is approaching 500 fwhp and high rpm. The stock block doesn’t survive that.
Old motor is out, and I've been gathering parts and cleaning things up before the new motor goes in. I got around to test fitting my 1 5/8" BBK shorties on the new engine and noticed the ports on the new heads are square, and my old SVO Ford aluminum heads are more rectangular. Looking online, it looks like square exhaust ports are typical for aftermarket heads, and 1 5/8" headers are more rectangular shaped. They fit fine on the new heads. So what am I missing here? I really don't want to or think I need to go to a 1 3/4" primary. So am I just overthinking this and just bolt them on and don't worry about it, or is there a different 1 5/8" header that's better fitting?
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They will fit and work fine, exhaust face on the bpe heads are flat, so should probably seal better than on the old ones. I actually use a modified LS 1 7/8" swap header with those casting and the outside 3" bolt pattern vs the oem ford one, but I ported them a long time ago and was complete budget set up where I built the heads out for under a grand, many switched to a more D shaped exhaust port years ago copying afr's stuff. That casting is branded by many even afr as the enforcer and most don't have any issues making decent power with it. Even the cheapy 100-150 China stainless shorties everyone sells now will work fine on those, some of the shorties just have way more of a square/ rectangle crimp at the port than others do and yours seem to haves a real heavy crimp to them from the pic, how old are they, bbk has changed their shorty design a few times in the last 20 odd years, last one resembles the P headers with the swooped out number 5 primary. Either way I wouldn't worry about to much as long as it seals.
There selling them just announced it at pri... Don't expect deals, kind of a captive market situation, darts using that german factory to now, since Daltons in chapter 11. same as summit as those are the bpe blocks and your forgetting how much dart was price gouging when demand was there before they dropped the prices back down.. ... PE groups gutted our casting industry, like they do to everything, the aluminum industries and pretty much are entire industrial base over the last 3 decades, so until something serious changes in this country this seems to be the new norm. Everyone keeps acting like nothings wrong, but if we gotta outsource engine blocks to Germany of all places and its cheaper then doing it here, we as country are in trouble. German labor ain't cheap, there iron is better, there factories more advanced and they have stiffer regulations and higher energy cost. Here the make dumb excuses like labor costs, when its top down greed bleeding industries dry or chasing only goverment contracts so they can over charge the tax payers.
They're the ceramic coated ones I bought off LMR about 8 or 9 years ago. They are holding up really well and I'd like to keep using them. The welds in the ports were really heavy when I got them, so I did grind them down and smooth them out some. I may get a little more aggressive with the welds and smooth them some more. Thanks for the info.
BPE doesnt cast anything, its was mostly china for stuff like that, the only thing they do is machine work in NE and better QC on parts they reject... They sell rejects on eBay cheaper. there Marshall engines and a few other companies if you want to look at import data and see who they actually source from, brands can't lie about landing bills. The heads are yongyu industrial same as afr, summit, jegs and who ever else brand the old "proheader" company dart clone castings that hooked up with blue print back in 2012 for those heads. There finished machined in China even the basic valve job... That's why the bowls look like crap on ever set with a deep cut in them, there an OEM tier supplier and they have been out since 2012 with out much issue, just decks are a little thinner then most because they digitized and copied a modified dart pro 1 head for the tooling. I'd like to find who's doing there intakes now, that edelbrock rpm air gap knock off they recently released for the 8.2 is cleaner than most I've seen out of the China air gap copies, all the China parts are just clones of some one else's parts, quality depends on who paid for the original tooling and bpe doesnt seem to skimp on that part, then China does what China does and that's sell it on the side. Probably why they didn't use China for blocks, still no cheap 8.2 China block after all these years, but the 9.2 and 9.5's been out for decades..Ask about the other parts. Specifically the heads, timing cover, and thermostat housing. Cause those are the ones that I have.
There's about 5 different factories knocking them out so quality is all over the place, have to know the differences in the castings from the molds to spot them, Some are better than others, blue prints air gap for the sbf wasn't out when the motortrend media stuff all shut down, it's better than what edelbrocks been turning out the past few years and I'd bet its China, based on the $215 price tag from them.
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