4piston

I've always wanted to ask this after years of seeing guys bring in old turd *** engine blocks and dumping thousands of $ into them. The B series stuff is getting exceptionally raggedy now. It seems like every one comes in with stripped threads, football mains, cracks, poop stains and spodem on them. There is always a good story for every motor....

"Well this fat chick was eating a Twinky and drove off with the gas pump handle in the car and the engine caught on fire then it rolled over in the bottom of this lake where it sat there for 2 years. I'm gonna run Hot Rod will you check this out and see if I can make 1200hp on it? Its only a little melted I think." LOL sorry that was bad.

Its crazy to me that someone wouldn't just buy a new Dart block and call it a day!

Hell I always thought the same about their CNC head which is long gone. You got a brand new casting and a loaded CNC head with good guides for what some guys ask for hand porting. I have flowed a lot of cylinder heads from everyone and unless someone spent a lot of time on a good port they were always in the 270-285 range and that Dart flat out flowed better than all of them. They couldn't sell one though.

Rant over LOL!

1992Si

I believe the block was not allowed in NHRA drag racing back in the day.

thundernoodle

rule restrictions

kyden

if i recall it took a lot of work to clean up the castings, and its a lot of money compared to a block that you can get from golden eagle for like a grand.

11sec CR-X

Rules non oem block! The head was allowed because it was a oem head with a cnc.

Rogue108

I think it was partly a rule thing, a timing issue, and a money issue. The DART setup was released around the peak of the sport compact craze and then it was ruled illegal by most sanctioning bodies. Strike one. When the sanctioning bodies folded the number for racers building cars dried up. Strike two. After all the money left the sport. We were left with the hardcore folks willing to spend the money (few) and the others who were trying to go budget and sleeve blocks (some). Strike three.

I don't just don't think there was enough demand after the collapse to keep it alive. It was novel idea and great that sport compact actually had enough demand to get its own aftermarket castings. Maybe when we the sport gets older and deeper pockets the after-market castings will come back

Mikey3000

lmao! maybe when B-series blocks get hard to come by there would be more of a demand for the dart blocks. i wonder how many unmolested B-series blocks are left in the country. i'd be willing to bet that 50% have been rebuilt....lol that may be an exaggeration.

4piston

Nopi allowed it and NHRA didn't, so I understand why it didn't work at first, but it has been years since all that. I keep seeing junk blocks with poor machine work long after NHRA is gone.

It has to be a money thing, but by the time you go out in the backyard and pull an old block out of the garden, clean it, send it off for sleeving, find out it is junk, find another, sent it back for sleeving, pay $xxxx for machine work, get it back and its wrong, send it out again...hell you have a lot of money and down time in a dirty old garbage can by then. It sounds pretty cool to me to call a number and in 2 days have a brand new block sitting on your doorstep.

Same deal with the heads. Everyone had no problem dropping $2K for someone to take 15 months to hand port half their head when you could call and have a 295cfm head sitting on your doorstep in 2 days.

I was just wanting to hear people's thoughts.

nsxmatt

The people that would use a expensive setup like that are mostly the race teams. I for one would be scared to spend that kind of money and wonder if the racing federation of the year that comes along will outlaw it.

For a street car, most people who sleeve blocks already have a perfectly running B-series swap to begin with and send off a good core. If you pull out a hacked up unknown core to get sleeved then that's your own bad move.

Rogue108

What was stated above is true. When people spend money incrementally it seems cheaper because you aren't laying out the money all at once, even though the total cost would almost be as much as a new DART Block. If people take into account the time for getting a block, shipping it back and forth, and machine work it could have been worth getting a DART.

In general it goes back to the adage. Pennywise, Dollar Foolish

ssc_thomas

I personally feel it's just a deal of it was outlawed once it may be outlawed again and it's a lot of cash to put out for something that may be or may not be legal to run. I'm sure as soon as someone went quick with one the flood of "it's illegal" or "Ban it" or "it isn't OEM" would just fly off the handle till the series allowing the block just bans it cause there are probably no more than a few people who would or could run it.

The K-Series becoming a solid engine option has probably killed a little of the demand for one as well. But some day the Dart block and aftermarket ones like it will be needed. Let’s just hope Dart and companies like them don't have too sour of taste from this project and still care to help the market. I personally would love to lay the heat to a fresh block with no fatigue except what I’m about to give it.

ESP.net

Wasn't there also an article somewhere, where the Dart deck had to be extended out a bit HG issues, (re welded) and some of the cooling ports massaged a bit, different then oem...

ExospeedAMcrx

The Dart block had its share of problems too. Just because it was a totally new block doesnt mean it was bulletproof and flawless out of the box.

So considering that you would have to line hone it and still may encounter issues over an oem sleeved block, might as well just prep an oem LS block, sleeve it and call it a day. Its not like there were issues with OEM sleeved blocks to begin with. There was no weakness in Sleeved blocks at all in 99.9% of the stuff we do.

Price difference even if you had to line hone a stock block and fix(timesert) the head stud threads is still at least $600-800 less than what a Dart Block would cost to prep for a build.

The sweed

I did me some reserch on the dart blocks.. They sometimes need alot of prep work before usage.. They need some always. Count on doing a line bore and have alot of trimming done.. In some cases welding the block before decking it is needed to have some added sealing area for the head gasket.. Endyn even had a sleeve leak coolant in to one cylinder on a brand new block.. The cylinder sleeves must be realy thin.. To have a bullet prof dart block it will need new thicker sleeves, line bore, some welding and alot of trimming and a mashining of the deck.

The only reason I see for chooseing a dart block is for the tall deck height that will yield a better rod to stroke ratio for a large 95mm crank. But for that kind of cash I would gues a k24 build is a better choice.

mikesrex

it's pretty simple

Honda Engineers>Darton Engineers

one thing we take for granted is the huge amount of engineering Honda put into it's engines. We are fortunate to have blocks that can simply be resleeves and make 1xxx WHP. Try to do that with a 5.0 Mustang on a stock block and see what happens.

trickeng

Right on!!! I had two of them and both were nothing but problems. Poor quality + high price tag = no sales.

EM2Civic

A buddy of mine ran one back in the day just sold the car with it like 2 years ago. I also remember them having a couple issues. One that I could remember was the spark plug seals not sealing at all, price was ~6,000CAD back then.

95dxsir2

lmao. i have one of those blocks sitting in my garage

nsxmatt

You get two 4cyl blocks with casting problems, or 2 dart blocks from what I'm hearing lol

base-op.1320

Because the dart block never bacame the honda-tech bandwagon - j/k

01DC4

iTrader: (3)

Good thread, Any one have any more personal experiance with the heads?

ExospeedAMcrx

Correction in reference to the post:
Darton and DART are different companies

1.5Slowmatic

gets done on 4.6 blocks all the time with OEM cobra cranks and rods/pistons without re-sleeving.

nsxmatt

It can be done on a ton of motors. The point was for a almost 100ci motor, stock crank, that is a impressive design.

rookiepains

Luke change your name to Mr. Angles. hahaha