MRL Mild 440

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.