Mopar To Soon Start Hellephant Production After Reliability Issues

Mopar is set to start production of its crazed Hellephant engine before the end of the year, Muscle Cars & Trucks reports.

The wild 7.0-liter supercharged V8 crate engine was unveiled 12 months ago at the SEMA Show, and earlier this year went on sale where its limited production run was soon sold out.

It’s reported that production of the engine was delayed because Mopar discovered the unit had excessive camshaft tension which was causing premature failure.

The company decided against building and delivering the engines and then fixing them at a later date and instead chose to not start customer deliveries until the engine is perfect.

Also Read: New 1,000 HP Dodge ‘Hellephant’ Crate Engine Roars In 1968 Charger

Head of Mopar performance and accessories Kim Mathers confirmed this to be the case with Muscle Cars & Trucks, although didn’t confirm the reported engine issue.

“The response was pretty overwhelming. They ‘sold out’ a year’s worth of production in two days… I can’t speak to the delay, but of course with anything we bring to market we want to make sure that it’s fully validated and appropriate for customer use,” Mathers said.

Curiously, Mopar has never actually said how many units of the Hellephant V8 it will produce. What we do know is that each crate engine was sold for $29,995, plus an additional $2265 for the available plug-and-play engine kit for most pre-1976 vehicles – that includes an unlocked powertrain control module, power distribution center, engine wiring harness, chassis harness, accelerator pedal, ground jumper, oxygen sensors, charge air temperature sensors, fuel pump control module, and a CAN bus interface device.

The crazed engine pumps out no less than 1000 hp and 950 lb-ft (1288 Nm) of torque.