MRL Mild 440

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MRL Performance

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We got a call from a guy in Ohio and he had a bunch of parts that he has been assembling for some time. He drops by and dumps the parts of with some cash and says "Mike, make this into a running 440, fill in the blanks and send me the bill". Ok no problem! He had a truck load of parts, there wasn't much left to get.

But there was a catch. "I don't want no fire breathing monster, I want a streetable engine I can drive anywhere, I don't want some lumpy running, finicky thing that only makes power at the top end. Been there done that, don't want it". OK, no problem.

So here is the run down of this nice, mild 440.

440 block prepped and ready to go
Stock 440 crank
Eagle H beam rods
Mahle FT pistons
RPM heads, worked over very little and HP 5 angle valve job
RPM intake
QF 780 VS carb
Lunati Voodoo solid roller cam(his choice and a good one) 237/243 @ .050 .566/.576 gross lift .539/.548 net lift
MRL solid roller lifters, Pro Plus
Hughes roller rockers, converted to use ball/ball oil thru pushrods
Milodon oil pan
Melling HV oil pump
MSD dist


Well, it idled very well at 900rpm pulling 16inches of vacuum. Kinda quite, nice sound. I ran it with a MSD 6, just like the one he has at home. I also ran it with the new FBO stock replacement ignition box. More on that in a minute.

It ran very well, and after a jet change, we got it into the mid to high 12's on A/F ratio and high 300's to low 400's on BSFC.

We got 530+TQ from 3500-5200 peaking at 546 right around 3900-4000.

It made 500+HP from 4850 on thru the top power band. Peaking at 545HP at 5700

This was all with the MSD 6 box. Plugs looked great, A/F was good, all was great in the world.

So now I put on this little FBO box. Im a little surprised how well it worked. I checked the timing, spot on the same. I made ZERO changes other than the box.

558HP 573TQ

We hit 500HP sooner, at 4700. AND carried 530TQ+ longer, 3000-5800rpm

Peaks were at the same rpm. 558HP at 5700 and 573TQ at 4000.
 
Nice build Mike. The MSD 6's are known to retard timing at RPM and are also prone to some other weird maladies. The FBO box probably is just a straightforward solid spark I'd wager. Still impressive vaccum for that cam. Nice strong driver I'd say. J.Rob
 
Mike that sounds great. Forgive me if I've asked you this before, my memory is terrible. Do any of your pressurized solid roller lifters work with the early Hemi?
 
Mike that sounds great. Forgive me if I've asked you this before, my memory is terrible. Do any of your pressurized solid roller lifters work with the early Hemi?
I would need to know the lifter bore spacing, but if its a .904 bore and a straight link bar, they should work. Email me some good pics of the bores. mrlperf340@gmail.com

Excuse my ignorance but what is an "FBO" box?
FBO is the company that makes this little guy right here. http://www.4secondsflat.com/Ignition.html
 
Been using a FBO box for about 10 years now. Tell'em rumbledish360 commented on this thread & recommended the ignition and sent ya on over.
 
MRL always gets my attention, and when I saw 440... you had me. Another super article on one of your fantastic builds. As always, thanks for sharing all the info.
 
Thats about what I am building all the way down to the ignition, I ordered a new MSD 6 box then changed my mind and am goin to try the Skip White HEI distributor with an MSD Blaster 2 coil. Already have the RPM heads, will be going to the dual plane RPM intake, looks like it will be perfect in that RPM range.
What advantage do you see oiling thru the pushrods? I havent given that any thought. I will be using the heavy slugs TRW 10.5 pistons with Eagle rods, providing they dont weigh more than the rods do LOL.
 
Holy crap!!! That is a HUGE gain from an ignition box. Mike, have you done any back to back comparison on an any other motors?
 
have a FBO distributor for my 360. i like the way they set it up.


i've read that the newer FBO box is just a fancy box with a HEI module inside it. never had one apart so i don't know how true that is.
 
have a FBO distributor for my 360. i like the way they set it up.


i've read that the newer FBO box is just a fancy box with a HEI module inside it. never had one apart so i don't know how true that is.
sounds like you had a bad msd box! bet all of them aren`t like that. not second guessing you tho.
 
i've read that the newer FBO box is just a fancy box with a HEI module inside it. never had one apart so i don't know how true that is.

Yup. Nothing wrong with that, have run Dons stuff in the past on two cars and it's never let me down! And if you just wanna plug and play it's the ticket. But for less $ and less wires and simple clean HEI conversion, Greg (Trailbeast) kit from classichei.com is cheaper and just at as effective
 
Another great build Mike. 550+ hp and all that torque should make for a great street mill. tmm
 
MSD box is fine. It gets sent back to MSD about once a year. We picked up 13HP and 27TQ.

I have tested it on many engines now. We always pick up around 7-10HP and 10-15TQ, this one squeaked out just a tad more.
 
The MSD 6's are known to retard timing at RPM and are also prone to some other weird maladies.

RAMM - Never heard that before, nor had any weirdness. Was this personal experience?



Mike - What is this new box like? A factory style ECU box or what? I've removed FBO product before. It was overpriced, not working as advertised, and after some snooping nothing remarkable. But that was the ECUs and recurved distributors. After my experiences with them Joe's comment wouldn't surprise me in the least.
 
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