TA STAGE 6. Who's ready to make some SERIOUS power?

Discussion in 'Race 400/430/455' started by TABuickMike, Dec 31, 2017.

  1. buicksWILD

    buicksWILD Well-Known Member

    Sheep to the slaughter
     
  2. Brandon Cocola

    Brandon Cocola Well-Known Member

    Your high end billet ls is in the 6's and with these heads I think you could have a 5 second run or better. Or have a mean pump gas all motor car.
     
  3. SS/GN

    SS/GN Well-Known Member

    How do you get sheep to the slaughter from LS? I see this on all the Buick forms. LS this and LS that BUT if you want to run with the big dogs,don't bring an LS or you will be embarrassed> FACT the fastest 275 or no prep cars are BBC. Flame on! o_O
     
  4. buicksWILD

    buicksWILD Well-Known Member

    Lmao, Big Block Chevys for sure.
     
  5. Todd69GS

    Todd69GS Silver Level contributor

    Fastest N/P cars are mostly 481X, SMX or Hemi powered.
    Plenty of really fast LS combos out there now using the LS Next blocks.
    Problem with us Buick guys is we can't get enough good parts in a timely fashion to build a stout combo.
    If you wanna go race right now build an LS or BBC for sure. I'm still clinging to the Buick deal but it's painful. Takes years instead of months to get parts and put a combo together.
     
    Tom Righter likes this.
  6. Tom Righter

    Tom Righter Well-Known Member

    Todd, I can agree with you more it’s just so frustrating. I was finishing my TA aluminum block build and while bolting on the heads and torquing them down,I wasn’t quite happy with the way the two head bolts felt when Torquing them. These were brand new stage 2 track Elliminator heads that were purchased and ported by a well known Buick performance parts supplier, So while speaking with Mike Senior at TA performance he confirmed what my suspicions were that The siamesed intake ports that have the head bolts going through and are sleeved with brass tubes, Need to have steel sleeves in those locations because the heads are weak due to the porting and are prone to cracking. So Off come the heads and sent out to be fixed. I’ll be lucky to get it on the Dyno this year. For the life of me I can’t understand why KB would invest and produce a aftermarket stroker crank before a new cast cylinder head that does not require a ton of porting While It’s great to have someone investing in anything related to Buick we need that cylinder head more than anything. I’m sure I’ll hear it for expressing my pinons again on a cylinder head but oh well.
     
  7. Bens99gtp

    Bens99gtp Well-Known Member

    Tom my head felt the same way on that bolt. I was at just over 100 on the torque when it started to feel funny.....I stopped and left it there seeing it was only about 5 short...nice to know what the issue is.....guess next time off I will look to get those fixed
     
  8. Todd69GS

    Todd69GS Silver Level contributor

    Sorry to hear that. That is a really scary thought.....especially for those of us that will be running boost.
    I've vented about this in the past as well. Top notch block with almost unlimited potential but nothing really to go with it. It's a bummer for sure. Maybe we are just being foolish for trying to make big power on this platform. Chris and I are going to make an honest effort with this deal but if it doesn't prove to be somewhat reliable we will be jumping ship. Not getting any younger and we want to race, not sit around and wait for parts.
    With that said I know it is very difficult to produce parts for a niche market and the efforts are appreciated. Hoping it all works out.
     
  9. Tom Righter

    Tom Righter Well-Known Member

    The thing of it is I know better, I thought maybe I would be all right and was just trying save time.I’ve been building this thing for years now!The last set of heads were done with the steel sleeves by Mike Phillips,Man do I miss that guy.Hell I’m just trying to build a reliable street/strip engine that makes decent power. I was looking to get 350 to 360 CFM which I did get.If you feel the roof of a cylinder head after it’s ported and then take into consideration where the washer is countersunk that’s where it’s prone to cracking there is just nothing left there. It would be nice if those sleeves were installed when they’re being machined at T/A Until somebody comes out with a real nice reliable good flowing head.
     
    1972 Stage 1 likes this.
  10. Tom Righter

    Tom Righter Well-Known Member

    Todd, with big boost you might see problems with reliability. Hopefully I’m wrong.if someone who Has built and done It could respond. I hope it works out for you, and you stay with Buick power.however I completely understand what you’re saying and if I was building a race car I would definitely switch Power. For what I’m doing with N/A power it shouldn’t be this hard!
     
  11. ken betts

    ken betts Well-Known Member

    My billet heads with water have been available since December of 2017. They flow over 500 cfm, Bare cost is 4995.00 a pair. If you run a class that requires cast heads but can’t compete, run in a different class Or brackets. A limited Run of cast heads will cost more than the billet heads , or you can sell them for a loss. Racing is not cheap, just look at the good parts for chevys.
     
    badbuik likes this.
  12. Tom Righter

    Tom Righter Well-Known Member

    How about if you’re not building a race car and you want a street strip car that’s reliable like you can build with an LS or hemi or even an older style GM engine, hell Pontiac now has multiple choices. We are not going to build on the Buick community if all we’re doing is building one off billet pieces were a handful of billet heads that can’t be driven on the street regularly. Can your billet heads with water be driven on the street regularly? Ken, what you talked about over two years ago was a new cast head that was coming out we can all go back and look at the posts and the talk about the catalogs and all the parts that were coming out. Not trying to start an argument however when you say things like that and put it out there that a new head is coming out people are waiting ,people held onto money thinking that a new head was coming out and didn’t move forward with their project and now we’re back to square one.
     
  13. Bens99gtp

    Bens99gtp Well-Known Member

    I love my buick car and power plant as much as anyone. And like many I have a young family and not unlimited funds for my addiction. And I too understand the small market for our parts drives up cost that needs recovering from r&d.
    But when we are talking
    5k for heads
    5k for block that will need more machining b4 it can be assembled
    5k for rotating assembly
    15+k to just have the parts sitting there to be able to begin to think about a long block b4 custom intake, valve cover, cam and lifters, cam, etc........what getting close to another 5k in just parts.
    So 20ish k b4 any tiny parts or assembly starts??
    There are several places to order a pump gas big cube other guy brand motor that puts over 850hp and tq out on pump gas, comes carb to pan with ignition for under 15k sitting at the door within weeks not a year later if the stars aline.

    I love my buick, but for me to go much beyond where I am now it might break my heart.....cause its easily looking 10-15k more money to build the same power out of a buick base motor.......and with an average Joe paycheck and 2 young kids....how does one justify spending close to double for the same power for a hobby........for most of us these cars don't put food on our table, roof over our families heads, or the clothing on our backs.....for the average Joe to say screw you family I'm going to spend twice the amount to get the same result.......yeah that doesn't get there in my book.

    And I totally get it all comes down to volume of sales and so on and so forth for the ppl selling the parts.......but for us out here it comes down to cheerios and diapers and mortgage payments too.

    But I'm thankful for the the parts to start to be available for the few than can and will be able to get them. It warms my heart to see a fast buick with s buick motor still..........
     
    GS464 and BuickBullet like this.
  14. ken betts

    ken betts Well-Known Member

    For the street? I haven’t gotten one call from anyone who wanted a cast head with over 500 cfm for a street motor. My heads were made specifically for a nostalgic top fuel motor. We needed460-480 cfm to compete and 8500 to over 9000 rpm motor. I drew up these heads myself and made a foam copy. Sent it to Al Dicksen, made the changes he suggested and sent the cad file I had made up to NRC. They machined the head. JW built a NA motor car hat turned 7100 at peak hp around 1060. That car has not been tested fully yet. That’s a bracket car with a fuel head.
    This thread is about TA heads that we know nothing about. Can anyone tell me what they flow? Can they be driven on the street. How much are they, when can we buy a set? TA existing S2 TE can be cnc ported to around 400 cfm.
    I have more to say but let’s start a new thread for my parts.
     
    badbuik likes this.
  15. ken betts

    ken betts Well-Known Member

    . You hit the nail right on the head! Pun intended.
     
  16. Tom Righter

    Tom Righter Well-Known Member

    Ken, I never said anything about a 500 CFM street head. But good luck on the sale on your billet heads.
     
  17. ken betts

    ken betts Well-Known Member

    My cast head will be a duplicate of my billet. It will have water jackets instead of being gun drilled. Any new upgrade to Stage 1 and 2 heads will come later. If 10 people step up for my cast heads and are willing to pay. I will tell the foundry to star cutting the patterns. The cad files have been done for months. The program to machine them has been done since dec 2017. We can put smaller ports and valves that give us whatever we want. We can shrink the port size by .025 to .050 at a time with 5 minutes click of a mouse.
     
    Briz likes this.
  18. Brandon Cocola

    Brandon Cocola Well-Known Member

    So as opposed to spending 20k on a reliable setup how much could you make with a junkyard 455 and a turbo on alcohol make. Could you just have 10 spare engines?
     
  19. ken betts

    ken betts Well-Known Member

    10 wouldn’t last long. 600 hp is close to max without a girdle then we’re back at spending money. This thread is about TA canted valve heads. Does anyone have. Any info about them?
     
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2020
    badbuik likes this.
  20. badbuik

    badbuik Well-Known Member

    I'm doing my best RESISTING comments to all but Ken..... This THREAD was started by Mike jr from TA, not Ken B....Like Ken has asked, and tried to steer this back on track; Well, any info. or updates, or flow numbers, or dyno hits, ANYTHING about these heads??? Information is KING....... Who cares if we're in a niche market, its good to have options.... The beauty of cars/racing/this Hobby, you can choose to do whatever you want, BBC SBC, BBB, Hemi, 2JZ 481X, SMX, even an LS.... Either way you go, anything other than STOCK, expecting some performance, is gonna cost ya! You can build on the cheap, or deep pockets will build expensive stuff. There will always be "haters", "shoulda coulda wouldas'", and supporters...........
    Gary G.
     
    GS464 and 67 Post GS like this.

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