I didn't weigh the Pond iron block, but I'll say that it's one of the heaviest blocks I've ever picked up....or helped pick up. My guess is that it weighs about 250 lbs. It's a chunk. They are made pretty much exactly like the aluminum Pond blocks, doweled mains, etc. The main caps have a threaded hole in the top and I use a little slide hammer to get them off when I need to. The iron block will go to a 4.400" bore. Not too shabby.
I've never touched a Shelby block, just OEM stuff and Pond stuff. I was a distributor for Genesis, but I got in right around the time people started complaining of the porosity issues and the time it took to have the issues fixed. I was gun shy.
I'm pretty fond of the Pond blocks, especially for what you get for the price for an aluminum block. The aluminum blocks are really light, I can pick them up with the caps on them and pack them around wherever I need to.
They come needing all machine work, but that's kinda par for the course. I don't know of any aftermarket blocks that don't need touched in almost every facet. My plan of attack is to usually check the plug behind the distributor, and they usually need tapped deeper. I pop the cam bearings in with some green Loctite, using Durabond bearings. The casting behind the front cam bearing needs clearanced for the distributor gear, and depending on which bearing you use, it will need clearanced too. The oil pump hole needs a little work, so that usually gets a little die grinder work. I also tap the dipstick hole for a plug.
The block gets torque plates put on, and then stuck in a hot jet wash cabinet to seat the sleeves. It's then bored and honed with torque plates, align honed, and then square decked. The lifter bores are reamed and honed to fit the lifters.
There are two things that stick out in my mind that I don't like....one is the rear "side oiler" galley plug is an o-ringed AN plug. Sometimes I have a hard time getting them to seal up. The other is that the holes that hold the oil filter adapter on seem to be pretty shallow and when I use a billet oil filter adapter that needs a socket head bolt, it seems like a 3/4" is almost too short, and a 7/8" is too long.
That was the Cliffs notes version I suppose.
The 487 is going to be pretty fun. The heads do pretty good for a mildly ported Pond head:
Intake
.300 221
.400 279
.500 323
.600 331
.700 344
.800 354
Exhaust
.300 179
.400 230
.500 254
.600 266
.700 270
The cam is a Bullet solid roller, 263/268, 110 LSA, with .700" gross lift. Not too wild, not too mild. It's got a Victor intake, ported by Joe Craine, and I got a free Holley Ultra HP 950 to try on it. T&D rockers, MSD, Aviaid pan, blah, blah, blah.
I expect on the Stuska dyno that I use, it will be somewhere around the 640-650 hp range. We've done a comparison between it and a neighboring Super Flow, and there has been around a 40 hp difference on an engine of this caliber.
It's going in a Shelby Cobra replica....pretty much 70-80% of my engines go in them.
