I spoke with Kennith last night.
I don't want to piss on the campfire, but this is reinventing the wheel, and it's been done.
W/R/T TA heads, I have repeatedly been told more were gonna be made, but they needed folks to pony up the $ ahead. I have called, emailed, sent smoke signals indicating I had Federal Reserve Notes to spend, but nobody wanted my money
W/R/T cooling, the answer is quite simple, PWM driven electric pumps. I have one in my shop (no, I don't know where) and someone else has an even higher flowrate pump waiting to get to that point.
W/R/T to blocks, first off, for $15,000, I can have a single block made. If two, $10,000, if three, $5,000. It is not realistic to expect 20 blocks to cost $300K. If one is having 20 made, the price is gonna crash!
Secondly, there is math data to make them from billets, but the guy who did it is nearly impossible to contact. In my case, once again, with cash in hand, he won't respond to emails. When is the last time any of us heard a busy signal? If I call outside of Kommiefornia business hours, the phone rings and rings. If I call during Kommiefornia business hours, I get the busy signal.
Speaking of dinosaurs, not only will this gentleman not answer emails, FaceBook PMs, the phone, when is the last time any of you wrote a letter by hand, and used the USPS to deliver? I wrote this gentleman a letter and he wouldn't even respond to THAT!
Kenny Duttweiler has built Buick engines from billet and has done silly things with them like run Bonneville!
HE has the math data to make the blocks, I have $, but he won't reply.
I had a contact in SOCAL who offered to visit when next in Kenny's village, but he moved to SEATAC to make the big buck$.
As a result, last year at PRI I spoke with a group out of OZ who gave me the above pricing. I'm really excited about this year as I intend to place orders for rods and pistons finally-after nearly 20 years of cyphering! Yes Virginia, you CAN have higher displacement RV8s, they will henceforth be called RV8$ though!
We CAN have billet blocks, all it takes is a little $. Now that my life has somewhat stabilized, I'm hoping to maybe have a billet block, but in the meantime, I have recently obtained an automatic boring machine (Kwik-Way FS if anyone is curious), I have a dyno (the room for which is slowly progressing), and I now work at a machine shop (but not one capable of making billet blocks-BUT, I can do just about anything else in-house now) where I can finish the block work I can't do at home-one of the specialties of the shop where I work is align-boring
If anyone is nearby, Kenny's shop is located at:
Duttweiler Performance
1563 Los Angeles Ave
Ventura, CA 93004
In the event anyone can speak with him, please tell him the guy who wrote him a hand-written letter sent you and I still want two blocks, but I want the water jackets continuous between the inner cylinders and I want to fit liners with an OD of 4.190". Having the head bolt thread bosses integral with the main webs would be a nice touch as well. Let me know how it goes, and once he provides a written quotation, I will wire transfer him the $ for two blocks.