Chat about HESCO's Aluminum Block & Head?

I was wondering if anyone would like to start a chat about the Aluminum Block and Head that HESCO is making for the JEEP 4.0... I am just beginning to get into the world of internal mods, and i would like to start a discussion about the pros and cons of an aluminum head and an aluminum block... There is a small chat on the HESCO site, but i thought this might help let more people know its out there(or going to be "soon"), and get some thoughts from the people on here that i trust so well..

If you have the money then I would go for it, but I wouldn't do it unless I already had everything else done. You could do a stroker for the price of that head. Plus the 4.0L is known for having occasional over-heating problems and aluminum heads don't react well to that. The block is definately not woth it unless you plan on drag racing regularly and the xj and the 4.0L might not be the best starting points if you are going to get serious enough about it to fork out that much money.

well, i'm thinking of doing build up and i was just planning on getting a production 4.0 and stroking it... but then i came across the aluminum setup... If nothing elso, i plan on getting the aluminum head and slapping it on top of a blue printed, honed, etc. block then stroking that out to 4.6L.... I mentioned the idea to my father,a nd he mentioned about corrosion in aluminum engines, he has to use a specialty coolant for his... that may be because it's a 4.4L BMW, or it may be common to aluminum... I am wondering what other problems may come up in swaping over to different metals.

The only difference between the BMW coolant and any other ethylene glycol coolant is that BMW dyes it blue instead of green. It seems to be a european thing, cause our Ferrari's come with blue too, but during service, gets replace with regular old green made by Shell that Ferrari tells us to use.

Ethylene glycol can not be mixed with propylene glycol (DexCool), and those are the most comon coolants. The new "safe" coolant is probably different, but aluminum engines do not need special coolant. You just need to change it at least every 3 years. If you were really worried about it, you'd check the electrolisis level of the coolant.

JeepinAudiophile said:

I was wondering if anyone would like to start a chat about the Aluminum Block and Head that HESCO is making for the JEEP 4.0l..

Click to expand...

Some of us have already gotten into this subject pretty deep in the JU forum. I've already added my "words of wisdom":

http://www.jeepsunlimited.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=487262&highlight=hesco
http://www.jeepsunlimited.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=487597&highlight=hesco
http://www.jeepsunlimited.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=487259&highlight=hesco
http://www.hesco.us/cgi-bin/EZBulle...c=Aluminum_4.0_liter_Jeep_engine.&&category=2
http://www.hescosc.com/aluhead.html