This is a 383 stroker V8 crate engine from the team at The Hot Rod Company, it’s rated at 508 bhp and it was developed for street-driven muscle cars, hot rods, trucks, and other automotive applications that favor plenty of torque low in the rev-range.
Each engine comes with a two year warranty, and they’re built in the United States by hand at the company’s 17,000 square foot facility in Washington State, not far from the Montana border.
This is the Chevrolet 383 Stroker V8 crate engine built by Hot Rod Company of Greenacres, Washington. It turns out 508 bhp and it was developed for street-driven muscle cars, hot rods, and modified trucks, with a focus on excellent low-end torque and usable performance, rather than high-rpm bragging rights.
History Speedrun: The Hot Rod Company
The Hot Rod Company is a high-performance crate engine builder based out of Spokane Valley, Washington. It specializes in small-block and LS-based Chevrolet V8s, and it was co-founded by JR and Katie Roby.
The Robys say they started the business in 2006, while budgeting for their wedding and trying to stay out of debt. JR listed an engine from one of his race cars on Craigslist for $5,000, and it sold within a day. “And the phone kept ringing and ringing,” he later recalled in a 2023 interview.
He told Katie that if the calls continued he would say the engine was for sale and build another, and within the hour he said yes to the next caller. People kept calling about the original listing for days after, and it became very clear that there was an untapped market for good quality crate engines.
JR grew up in Salem, Oregon, where his after-school chores included stripping and building engines and transmissions with his father. He started drag racing at 16, and later while working as a personal trainer, he was sponsored by 24 Hour Fitness, which gave him a drag car and $30,000 a year to compete. He moved to Spokane in 2002 to help open one of the chain’s gyms.
The company has a policy that each engine is built by a single person, and that person signs the block when it’s done. A build takes about two days on average, but it can take longer for more complex builds. JR notes that the company has had warranty issues on fewer than 1% of their builds, a figure he credits partly to the one-builder approach.
Engines come with a 2-year, unlimited-mile warranty, and a 5-year upgrade is available. In 2023 the company bought a $3 million, 17,000 square foot former welding shop at 12205 E. Empire Avenue in Spokane Valley to convert it into a showroom and a full-service machine shop. Before this, the engines were still being assembled in a 9,600 square foot building on the Robys’ 11-acre residential property.
This is a 383 stroker V8 crate engine from the team at The Hot Rod Company, it’s rated at 508 bhp and it was developed for street-driven muscle cars, hot rods, trucks, and other automotive applications that favor plenty of torque low in the rev-range.
In 2025 the company’s shop floor had Rottler machines for boring, honing and valve grinding, along with two five-axis EM69HP machining centers that handled all of its CNC cylinder head porting, bringing as much work in-house as possible both for quality control and to help keep the final cost to the customer down.
The Chevrolet 383 Stroker V8 Crate Engine Shown Here
This is the Chevrolet 383 Stroker V8 crate engine built by Hot Rod Company of Greenacres, Washington. It turns out 508 bhp and it was developed for street-driven muscle cars, hot rods, and modified trucks, with a focus on excellent low-end torque and usable performance, rather than high-rpm bragging rights.
The engine is based on a Chevrolet small block V8, with displacement increased to 383 cubic inches (6.3 liters) from 350 (5.7 liters) using a 3.75 inch SCAT steel crankshaft, forged 5.7 inch connecting rods, and lightweight Keith Black/Silvolite pistons. It has a 10:1 compression ratio, aftermarket aluminum cylinder heads with 2.02 inch intake and 1.60 inch exhaust valves, and a Trick Flow hydraulic roller camshaft. It also has roller rockers, chromoly pushrods, King Race bearings, and a high-performance oil pump.
The 383 Stroker has an operating range of 2,000 to 6,500 rpm, with a 2,000 to 2,500 rpm stall torque converter recommended for automatic transmission applications. It comes with a Brawler carburetor, distributor, ignition leads, flexplate, and a front accessory drive with provision for air conditioning.
Each engine comes with a two year warranty, and they’re built in the United States by hand in the company’s 17,000 square foot facility in Washington State, not far from the Montana border.
It was developed as a full turnkey package and each engine comes with a two-year limited warranty. It can also be ordered with optional electronic fuel injection if required, and they can supply a compatible TH350 or 700R4 automatic transmission if needed.
It’s now being offered for sale on the official eBay store of The Hot Rod Company here, with a Buy It Now price of $8,987 USD.
Images courtesy of The Hot Rod Company
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
