400's are they any good?
Yep, I can see that trying for really big power from a stock block is a bad idea. I never really thought about how much stress a centrifical blower puts on the crank snout, but most of the centrificals use a factory ribbed serpentine style belt (at least with low boost). The 6-71, 8-71 roots blowers definately put a hurt on the crank. A friend of mine broke the snout off of his freshly built small Chevy the first time he romped on it and ended up having to go with a crank with a big block sized snout. I have no plans to do anything with my 400 any time soon, its now safely stored in my garage and I'm getting ready to finish up my 440, as the short block is complete and ready for heads. As far as turbos are concerned, I'm not not using them. I've had a turbo Shadow and a LeBaron and I used to build alot of parts like intercoolers and intake pipes and exuast parts for a bunch of the front drive Mopar guys so I've had my fill of them. The problem with them (to me) is that they turn into one big science project and the boost greed always takes over, as in "wow 10 lbs is awsome, lets try 15, even better, how bout 20, holy s$#%!", then comes the broken motor.