Kenne Bell Stage 3 heads

Spoke to the previous and the original owner of my 1970 Stage 1. Both had stated that they received a significant amount of "flack" when they both stated there were Kenne Bell stage 3 heads. Most people stated that there never was such a thing as Stage 3 heads.

Looking at previous discussions, it is known that KB bought "off the shelf" Stage 1 heads and sent them off to be significantly ported by a separate vendor (Cylinder Heads West).

I will post pictures of the KB Stage 3 head once I get it removed...

 

Looked like KB bought the Stage 2 head casting from Buick...

 

Really cool buick performance history! look forward to seeing the pictures of the head itself. Thanks for sharing.

 

Not sure what the coronation in flow numbers would be from 18" these are advertised at compared to the 28" most use today........or if an equation could be used to roughly extrapolate numbers....but those stages numbers are better than me TE2 heads that are cnc ported

 

Very cool paperwork though

 

I agree at 28”there’s no way they flow that well

 

As was pointed out elsewhere on this forum: "Jim (Bell) was a heck of a salesman"... LOL

 

https://www.flowspeed.com/cfm-numbers.htm

Comparing results can be made easier once it's known that air follows a square law of pressure versus flow. This means that to double the amount of CFM flowing through a passage, the pressure differential (depression) must be increased by a factor of four. A simple formula is as follows.

Flow at the new pressure drop = (the square root of (new pressure drop/old pressure drop)) times CFM at the old pressure drop.

An example of the above formula would be to convert flow numbers taken at 28" of water to those which would occur at 25" of water.

(25/28) = .89286

Using the square root key on your calculator and inputting the above number gives .94489 which can be rounded off to .945.

We can now multiply our CFM values at 28" of water by .945 to obtain the theoretical CFM values at 25" of water.

 

What he said, lol

 

i love the magical 480hp

 

Holy hell. Where did the tooling end up? Hopefully not the scrap pile.


Edit- or is that what TA used?

 

Good question ‍♂️

 

What would be amazing would be if once these are removed if they could be flowed by today's standards and compared. My te2 heads are off and could be used to compare against.

Mine were cnc done by Scotty, but the flow numbers came off the bench at AMP. He didn't have any skin in the game on my heads but we did flow them compare to his best ever hand ported TE2 head....mine won but not by much, they traded punches throughout the lift range.

But would be great to have real numbers to compare too......not just advertising from 50 years ago

 

Very cool stuff thanks for sharing. does anyone have photo of k-B stage 3 head decal mention inprevious comments.

 

Mike at TA could probably do the flow numbers on some Iron Stage 2 heads he has a set and will soon have mine at his shop also, mine were worked over pretty good so they would have about as much flow as possible for iron Stage 2 heads, At least in the ballpark. I’ll talk with him about it next month when I see him.

 

The only decals I found in all of the KB materials was these....

 

Here’s a set of un touched irons stage 2 heads flow numbers AMP Tom Rixs car. You can compare your heads too.

 

FINALLY pulled out a stock, standard valve 455 head, part # 1231786- date code B 19 to compare to the KB Stage 3 head. The Stage 3 head is # 1240149, S1 cast above it, date code E 30.

 

Valves- standard and KB Stage 3 (really stage 1's)...