BUILDING A BETTER BIG-BLOCK

CHRYSLER’S ORIGINAL “FirePower” Hemi engine family elevated factory horsepower thresholds in the Fifties and did so with dramatic style, but Hemis were costly to manufacture and their big cylinder heads ate up a lot of underhood real estate.

With the realization that building Hemi engines in the volume required to keep pace with new overhead-valve V-8 engines from General Motors and Ford would be prohibitively expensive, Chrysler got to work on a new V-8 design that would rely on a more straightforward wedge-style cylinder head. The new engine family was dubbed the B series and was introduced in 1958, with a raised-deck version, designated the RB series, debuting a year later in a 413-cubic-inch displacement.

The B and RB engines made strong power that was generally comparable to their more exotic Hemi cousins, which really came alive at higher rpm. The tall-deck RB platform supported a stroke increase from 3.38 to 3.75 inches, which significantly bolstered torque production in the over-square (larger bore than stroke) design. It gave RB-based engines a serious dose of much-appreciated low-end grunt.

The RB, of course, would serve as the foundation for all of the strongest Mopar engines during the muscle car wars, from the Max Wedge variants early in the Sixties to the 440 Six Pack/Six-Barrel engines that closed the era in the early