The guys at Hood Performance in West Plains, Missouri, are always taking on unique projects for their customers. In fact, EngineLabs has featured one of their engines before in proprietor Alan Hood’s unique diesel-block 442 Oldsmobile gasoline engine.

This time around, they’ve constructed a neat 504ci Chrysler for customer Rod Hamby, which centers around a low-deck 400-cubic-inch Chrysler B engine block and was built to be a pump-gas beast that Hamby would be able to drive anywhere. On the dyno it cranks out 501.6 horsepower at 5,300 rpm and a monstrous 590 lb-ft of torque at a low 3,900 rpm.

“The engine will be going into Rod’s 1970 ‘Cuda and will be backed up with a Tremec 5-speed transmission,” says Hood.

The engine uses a 4.150-inch stroke forged crankshaft from Eagle Specialty Products, along with a set of Eagle’s forged connecting rods measuring 6.760-inch in length. Custom Ross pistons making 9.5:1 compression were selected to match up with the bore dimensions of 4.400-inch, and the engine was designed to be a torque monster from the outset to assist in drivability.

“We wanted to shorten up the connecting rod to make it more responsive down low for street driving. With a longer rod it would have been a little bit lazy,” Hood explains. “It has a real small camshaft in it, as Rod likes to drive his vehicles we also used an Edelbrock Performer RPM cylinder head on it. I figured it would make more torque than horsepower, and it ran quite a bit better than I expected.”

In the interest of keeping expenses down on the build, Hood selected a hydraulic Bullet camshaft featuring 230/232 duration at .050-inch and .504-inch lift figures on both intake and exhaust.

They also used a set of EDM lifters to help with oiling. The EDM design offers an oil hole in the bottom of the lifter to provide a constant flow of pressurized oil to the camshaft and lifter contact point to extend camshaft and lifter life. Other special considerations with the use of the hydraulic camshaft are minimal – just the use of the proper high-zinc, high-lead oil and the design is trouble-free.

The top end of the engine also includes an Edelbrock Performer RPM intake manifold and a 780-cfm Quick Fuel carburetor. These items were selected for ease of use, and Hood feels that although there may have been a bit more horsepower to be unlocked with more serious parts, the drivability aspect of the build became paramount to parts selection. The customer travels quite a bit for work, and the ability to roll up to any fuel pump and gas up and go was most important. Another cool build from the folks at Hood Performance!