wedge engines,

[69 rt]

I am rather new to this hobby and I hear readers talk of wedge engines, what years did they make a wedge engine and is my 1969 RT 440 considered a Wedge?
Thanks
69 rt

[RD]

they made them from 1959-1978 as far a big block wedges go.  they ranged from 350, 361, 383, 400, 413, 426w, and 440.

[Big Lebowski]

I am rather new to this hobby and I hear readers talk of wedge engines, what years did they make a wedge engine and is my 1969 RT 440 considered a Wedge?
Thanks
69 rt

440 RB (raised block)

[Headrope]

As I've always understood it ... "Wedge" refers to the shape of the combustion chamber inside the heads. So, depending how technical you want to be, most every B or RB engine could be considered a wedge motor. Usually, though, "wedge" is reserved for describing race motors, such as the 413 Max Wedge ... or by folks who want to add a little more excitement to the description of their motors, or by folks who took a motor smaller than 426, and bored it out to achieve or excede the same displacement while keeping the wedge heads.
A Google search will turn up in-depth history of Chrysler motors, but the short of it is that in the 50's, before the drag racing era of the '60s, Chrysler motors had hemispherical combustion chambers. You'll often hear those referred to as being the "early" or "baby" HEMIs. The "wedge" motors came out after the early HEMIs, and before the famous 426 HEMI.

[Runner]

a wedge isnt a race engine term, hell a small block chevy is a wedge head. however ma mopar did a good job of putting a cool name to the engine.  if the combustion chamber is wedge shaped its a wedge motor. small blocksmopars are wedge motors as well.  ie. 340 "wedge" decals on the hoods of dusters

[dkn1997]

generally with mopars, if it ain't a hemi, it's a wedge.

[Mike DC]

Yeah, that's the deal.

For the typical American musclecars, there are basically either wedge-shaped combustion chambers, or the occasional Hemi-shaped combustion chambers.  The Wedge-shaped ones are BY FAR the most common in any engine made before the 1980s.  (And any time the manufacturer actually did use Hemi-headed combustion chambers in the musclecar era, they usually bragged about it in a very loud voice.)

Wedge heads are cheaper to make because of fewer moving parts.  The wedge design is also physically smaller to fit in the engine bay (and a few pounds lighter in weight for the same reason).  But the Hemi heads are a better design in terms of raw performance potential.  This is mainly true at higher RPMs, like 4000 and up.

So a 383 or a 440 is a "wedge head."

A "Max Wedge" was the top-of-the-line Mopar performance engine in the early 1960s.  The 1963 426 Max Wedge was the peak of it.  (It was similar to a 440 cylinder head, but with huge port sizes.)  Then the next year they introduced Hemi-heads for the 426 motor and stopped really pouring the big effort into developing any more hi-po wedges after that.  The racers all tossed out their Max Wedge 426s and replaced them with 426 Hemis in 1964.  

They still made nice performace-oriented wedge-head motors for street cars for years to come though, because the Hemis were too expensive for most buyers.  Motors like the 440 six-pack were designed to appeal to people who wanted Hemi performance but not the Hemi pricetag.

.

[Chryco Psycho]

a lot of other brands used the Canted valve chambers which really are not wedge design , , the Poly was more of a canted valve engine