Curious

Cuda620, I think your in the same position as me right now. I love Mopars. I think they are the best looking cars ever built. Their styling department was the best hands down, but their engineering department has been behind for 100yrs. It's always been an uphill battle being a Mopar lover, especially now. Nothing would make me happier than stuffing a Chrysler plant under the hood. Here is where my experience has left me in the decision making process.

Times have changed. To me building any car without an overdrive trans is retarded today. If you aren't doing 80 on the highway you are a hazard. Nothing burns my *** more than seeing muscle cars holding up traffic turning 3500rpm in the right lane. That's strike one against Chrysler. Even most "Mopar or no car" guys are loosing their hate for GM transmissions. GM has made the best transmissions for basically the entire history of automobiles. To do a GM trans/Chrysler motor figure about a grand for adapters ect.

On to engines now. The slant 6. I love the goofy thing. If their was anyway possible to make one sound cool I would go that route and still may. It's probably the strongest platform they've ever built, and the weird factor is of the charts.

LA/Magnums. I like this engine in it's stock form. The Rube Goldberg crap drives me nuts when you hop them up though. Building the short block is straight forward and affordable, it's the top end that is a pain in the ***. To get heads that flow over 300 your gonna pay @$3000. Now add $2000 in valve train parts. So now we've got$5000 in the top end and nothing works. Bust out the Dremel and cut oiling grooves, add shims, etc. Are you kidding me? This thing has been around 60yrs! Nobody's figured it out yet? I've got a 318 LA roller motor at my shop. If I can figure out a reliable valve train I may do a 390 stroker.

B/RB. This thing has the trifecta of Chrysler engineering flaws. Weak block, crap oiling, and bad valve train geometry. I can remember 440 smog motors rated at less than 200hp pounding the cranks out from block flex. After talking to the experts in BBM short blocks they confirmed my experience. Even a fully prepared 400 block is on borrowed time at 600hp.

Gen3 Hemi. I've owned over 20 of these pieces of garbage. I've had them in my work trucks and personal vehicles. Never again. They finally figured out how to make a block that doesn't break, but again they hung their hat on poor oiling and horrible valve train geometry. Every one I've opened up had piston damage. There is obviously something in the design that invites detonation. Also every one had badly scored cylinders and bearings. My wife's 3rd Challenger lives in bay 1 of my garage awaiting a lawsuit. We payed the extra$3000 for the lifetime warranty and they won't cover it. It's been through 2 sets of heads, 3 cams, 48 lifters, 32 pushrods, and 32 rockers. Still sounds like a deisel powered sewing machine and a minivan could kick it's ***!

Also I believe that your idea of reliability is more in tune with mine. Being able to drive it to the local tasty freeze and show it off to the local geriatric patients isn't my idea of reliability.

So that's where I'm at in my decision making process... Good luck on yours!