Over the years I have been told by numerous people that an open deck block is best left under 350bhp due to cylinder ovalling/cracking and just generally not being very strong. Sounds true as there's the closed/semi/pinned blocks floating around asking good amounts of cash!
But lately im being told the open deck will handle 500bhp all day maybe even more.


What's this about? I know the 2.5 walls are thin so crack, but lets just keep this strictly about 2.0 blocks.


Has anyone here actually broke one? or is it abit of scaremongering.

 

There's a few that have run ODB up to and slightly above 500bhp without block issues.

I'd say most of it's just internet talk that stems from the belt and braces approach, after all if you're going to spend upwards of £5k for an engine that can take 500+ and actually plan on using it, then you want to start with the best base possible.

Personally I wouldn't bother with 2.0L CDB if I was looking to go north of 500bhp it would have to be 2.35L using a 2.2 block.

But again it depends what characteristics you're after and what it's going to be used for, there's always going to be more than one way to skin a cat.

 

My ODB ran 520hp for 30k miles... No issues, it wasn't the block that gave up but a manufacturing issue with the gudgeon pins!

 

2.0 ODB ok at 500 for fast road use, but use SCD for head room

cheers

bob