Dowels to locate the main caps in block?

[Jim Comet]

Here is a picture of my piston and rod assembly before going into the short block assembly. Notice in the photo the rod has an alignment dowel to locate the rod cap. My question is would it benefit a non cross bolted FE block to have this done to the main cap to block mounting? The registers in the block keep the cap from moving side to side, but wouldn't the dowel possibly help keep the block from splitting because the dowels would transfer some of the stress to the main caps (help keep the mains from spreading apart)? Jim

[cjshaker]

Dowl pins are used on the main caps in the BBM blocks, but the purpose is to keep the cap from moving around and "fretting", which is basically the transfer of metal from cap to block. Even cross-bolting doesn't stop this, although I think it does help. My understanding is that there isn't enough material on factory blocks to do this, at least without weakening the area of the main bulkhead.