[asphaltgambler]

My knowledge of Hemis: Chrysler had 1 year ('66?) I believe where Joe Public could walk into the local dealer and buy basically a race hemi car but street legal and it was just that - a street legal race car with very high compression, big solid lifter cam, big CFM carbs and lightweight body. Those are very rare and were homologated to be legal NHRA stock class where they dominated stock class drag racing.

The problem, as you can imagine, were ridiculous warranty costs and customer complaints with selling a car like that to the average 'Joe'. That program lasted just 1 year.

The later street Hemi's durability were much improved but as said earlier waaaay detuned for the street specifically; low compression, hyd cam with very low lift (.489") and short duration. Lastly they were much heavier with steel heads by far than GM of Ford big blocks.

The street Hemi's of the later era were mostly show with-out the 'go' you'd expect paying all the extra $$$ and added weight - putting up with constant fouling of the plugs, carb sync / tuning issues and losing street races to the other guys.

Obviously engine had the potential to be great but in real street trim was not competitive unless you pulled the motor and rebuilt to race specs.

If I were looking to build a street Hemi today and were not concerned with originality is replace the stock heads with aluminum. Then put some static compression and hyd roller camshaft in it where the cranking compression is at least 180psi. The strengths of this engine is the ability to make serious power in the upper RPM ranges through port size and cylinder head design.

If you're looking for a mild street engine in a mild state of tune you'll be really disappointed with the lack of torque and performance especially with the smaller displacement early engines.