Guys, a friend of mine told me that Edelbrock is coming out with aluminum heads for the 455 buick. Anyone else heard this? My friend said he read it in Hot Rod. Will these be TA castings with an Edelbrock name on them? Bob
All mags are reporting new heads and intake by Edelbrock. They will be Edelbrock pieces and not TA. Looks like TA will have some price competition. Maybe the Edelbrock heads will be cheaper due to their mass production capacity.
That's good news and I hope it's true. Maybe some roller rockers from Edelbrock as long as I'm wishing. :laugh: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Couple of summers back, about the time Edelbrock came out with the Pontiac heads I talked to an Edelbrock rep at the Western Nat's in Bakersfield and at that time there were no plans for a Buick head from them. Thought that was a touch strange cuz the Pontiac is just barely more popular than the Buick. Some of the Pontiac troops may protest, but at the local rod runs, most times there are just a couple more Pontiacs than there are Buicks.
Well, competition is good. Chances are that the heads will be a good cheap alternative to iron. I doubt they will compete with the TA heads, as far as flow and quality, but you never know. Now, if AFR would step up and start making Buick heads...
well. Well if they are like the Edelbrock heads for the Pontiac and Oldsmobiles then we will end up with a direct copy of a 70 stage 1 head or maybe a 67 big port head. Along with all of the good and bad things associated with those castings. Time will tell. I guess it's about time though. The Edelbrock rep told me about 4 years ago that they would be making a Buick head about the same time they made an AMC head. Although I believe he was insinuating that they would not likely make either... Looks like he was wrong.... regards
I talked to a rep. at the big Summit car show about heads. He was unaware of any plans to make Buick heads. Hey but I got a free hat.
Does anyone know what magazines have commented on the potentially upcoming Edelbrock aluminum heads? Their Website doesn't show anything about Buick heads - I sure wonder how the AMC guys got Edelbrock to make a head for them. I thought Buicks were orphans to an extent, but it seems the AMC guys are really out there by themselves. Anyway, here's a direct quote out of the Edelbrock catalog that could indicate a good chance for us to have another choice in aluminum heads. "High-Tech Machinery for Cylinder Head Manufacturing Building a 65,000 square foot Distribution Center in 1999 allowed us to expand our manufacturing facilities for greatly increased efficiency, especially in cylinder head machining. The expansion includes three high-speed Makino A88 machining centers with 12,000 rpm spindles that cost a total of $2.7 million. Two of the Makino A88 machining centers are linked together with an automated pallet delivery system. Edelbrock was one of Makinos first customers to install the A88 machines, dramatically improving our capabilities. " With Edelbrock making such a large investment in such machinery it sure looks like knocking out a CNC program for knocking out a low volume (sales-wise) set of cylinder heads would be no big deal. Interesting stuff anyway....
Makino I used to work for Makino. There was a bit of tension over who would get to do the install on those machines as everyone wanted to see the Edelbrock facility. A88's are some really nice VERY high speed and high accuracy machines. If I remember they got those along with a rail guided vehicle to load/unload pallets of parts into the machines. The A88's alone were probably upwards of $ 1/2 million each! Unfortunatly the CNC program is just a small part of making anything as complex as a cylinder head. T/A is doing them in relatively small batches on their HAAS machines with rotary tables in them to allow 4 axis machining. If Edelbrock does this they would probably buy some fancy hydraulic palletized fixturing for the Makinos and run off 200+ pieces (the A88 is allready a 4 axis machine). I'm not sure about the casting but my understanding is that getting aluminum castings made in Mexico right now is pretty affordable. Someone out there has to have some inside info on all this. Come on cough it up!!! Could get real interesting with 3 vendors making heads for our engines. I just hope it works out for everyone as we can ill afford to loose any of the handful of people that take the time and money to make parts for our cars!!! regards
Personally I would Support TA with my Wallet. Edelbrock will get along just fine without the $$ from our small niche while every $$$ in revenue that TA looses affects us all. Time and Time again, Mike has put his neck on the block (pun intended) for us and he deserves our support
Hi Guys, I agree 1000% with Alan!:TU: And to reverberate what Ken said earlier....The Pontiac and Olds heads Edelbrock has produced are nothing more than GM "knock-off" iron heads made out of aluminum.ou: Does anyone actually think "Lil 'O" Vic would do anything over and above that for the Buick community?? o No: Support TA and they (Mike and the crew) will continue to support us!:TU: And as a little side note.....I will support BullDog once the new block is available too.:Brow:
Gregg Suyenaga from Edelbrock's tech. dept. emailed me today and notified me that they will not be making heads for Buicks. He says that this information was wrong. I wished it was true, but not.
