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Original Message
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| Genesis was the first stop on my trip. |
| By Dave Shoe - 09/10/2002 7:12:15 PM; IP 12.104.160.195 |
My weeklong trip took me to Genesis, Columbus, the Henry Ford Museum, and to Total Performance. I was surprisingly welcomed at all of these stops, and, in particular, I was a bit stunned when John Vermeersch opened the doors to Total Performance and let me take over a thousand photos of interesting FE goodies over a period of three days. I learned a bunch and am still a bit sore from moving all those cranks, heads, blocks, intakes, and other FE goodies around.
I very much wanted to visit Dove Performance this trip, but the combination of a dead cell phone and the heaps of great goodies at Total Performance mean I'll have to visit Dove when I set out to visit Holman Moody early next year.
I was very impressed by what I found at Genesis. GEnesis 427 is the brainchild of Tim McLoughlin (sp?) and Ron Read, both of Indianapolis, Indiana.
I got a tour through both the machine shop and also the foundry which they have allied with, and got to see the patterns and molds for the block, as well as the castings.
The machine shop is ISO9000 qualified. Because the shop makes military components, they are not allowed to deviate from these procedures for non-military projects. This means Genesis blocks are being machined to the same standards as missile parts. The CMM (coordinate measurement machine) in the machine shop's inspection department will be used to certify that the measurement fixtures used to inspect the finished blocks are machined to exacting tolerances.
There are presently two Mazatrol CNC machines set up for full-time machining of Genesis blocks. Each of these machines holds all the tooling specifically needed for cutting and tapping the blocks to completion. It takes four hours for one machine to machine one block completely. Four blocks a day are the anticipated production rate, twenty per week, a rate which will likely be in effect in perhaps three weeks (my guess). I expect production is in full swing this week, though I doubt they want to be machining 20 per week until a couple weeks pass.
There were three finish machined blocks at the time of the Columbus show ten days ago. I believe one or two finished blocks were at the show. Two of these finished blocks have likely been sliced apart (destructively inspected) last week in order to assure the product is ready to go to a customer.
Genesis is temporarily nicknaming their present iron block the "Generation 2", because they've made numerous changes in both design and process control since their initial effort. All remaining "Generation 1" blocks will be destroyed, and none have left their hands. Principle changes to the Generation 2 block involve more assured support of the cylinder jacket cores to prevent core shift.
They also had one aluminum block cast up and available for inspection. It had not been machined, but looked just like a production 427 iron block. I picked it up with two fingers. The aluminum sand cores are a bit different than the iron block cores because they pour the metal in very different fashion.
The skirt of the iron block is stronger than any FE block I've ever seen. Granted I've never yet seen a Shelby block, and I can be sure Shelby also has a rigid design.
Note the rumors that the Shelby block do NOT resemble an FE block are apparently false. The Shelby block IS a reasonably authentic facsimile of the FE, though I kinda doubt it comes close to the Genesis block for matching the looks of the original.
The foundry is also ISO9000 certified, so it can be expected that process control will be good here, too.
I expect there will be "shelf stock" of Genesis iron blocks within two months. It'll probably be three years before I can afford one myself, but I'll be dreaming of supercharging and revving the hell outta my Genesis block in the mean time. Hammering around the racecourse will be lots of fun.
Nodular iron 428 cranks and MR heads will be available from Genesis "sooner than you think". I see no reason to spout off anticipated dates right now. Just be assured the wait is not long at all.
While I'm probably not the best person to make a determination of whether the Genesis projects will succeed, I do have a real good feeling about what I see. I like the approach these two guys are taking, and believe that the FE will remain a popular engine on the racetrack for a long time to come.
Shoe.
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