Quote:
Originally Posted by 400Eric
If the external ribs weren't of some benefit, M.B. would not have spent the tooling money to add them. I've seen the same thing occur with the AMC I6 as it has evolved through the years to become the Jeep 4.0 and gained power, additional external ribs have been added. Again, they wouldn't have spent the tooling money if there wasn't a benefit. Car companies are disgustingly cheap.
If the 3.4 AMG was the hot set up, there never would have been a 3.6 AMG.
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You're also assuming that everything was done in the sake of performance.
You have to remember, that even in a company that produces the product that Mercedes does, the final vehicle design is determined by their crack team of accountants. I'm personally of the belief that the M104 is better than the M112, but that's just me.
Anyway, back to the block, The later model blocks have seen 500hp, but Pumpish is pushing his M103 (which is the same block as the .980) to well over 650hp on stock internals before still using the stock block and crank to get to 1k. I'm not saying the later block is weaker, nobody has tested one to failure (save for a C36 block and that was due more to cylinder wall thickness). Next time I get the chance, i want to weigh and check the thickness of the blocks, as I'm willing to bet that NVH and overall amount of material in the later blocks will both be large factors in this. Since these blocks still are so similar, the tooling cost wouldn't be that much different considering the massive scale on which these engines were made.
And have you ever considered that AMG went from the 3.4L .980 based motor to the 3.6L .940 based motor because they stopped producing the .980 motor?