I am in the process of starting to produce aluminum cylinder heads with a joint venture between a freind of mine. Is anybody interested..if so what would they be worth per set. These will not have press in valve guides but bronze like chevy to keep costs down also hardened intake and exhaust seats. Bbc valve springs for performance. These r not being made by Eelco or Marty. He ripped me off of $600 cash and 6-94's that he said would be rebuilt nearly 2 years ago. So these r not from a previous thread. Remember the 4bbl manifold were still waiting for?
I know that the originals were steel shim type... I have a set of older gaskets made by victor that are like a fel-pro and they have a GM number also, that I might have redone. what would be the best??? your input greatly appreciated.
under 3000 grand complete with valves would be good, what about a intake to go with it? need a good intake to keep up with the good heads.
Currently, my 62 Blown Wildcat has all the goodies so far that the aluminum ones would have. My 438 is a great tester for them. The ports will be clean but not opened since after reading about the porting from other members, it does not do much for them. The exteriors would be either polished or casted to look like a typical iron head that is undecided. I am currently running 125 Lbs of pressure on my springs as we went with Big Block Chevy because the cost was good and we still had 1/8" clearance from the push rods. So currently, I am getting a few bits from members to see what they would like in a head. I dont want to change the ports or the bolt holes since I would like these to be "bolt on". One thing I always wondered is why a tunnel ram was never made for the nailhead?? Also, I could sell them as assembled as well as stripped so people can have their own machine shop do what they want with them.
I may be interested in a set of heads but 1st lets see if there will be a significant improvement of flow. I too am curious of what gaskets to run and what intake will be the best for performance. I hate to drop some serious coin on the top end only to lose some weight and gain ample HP. From what i have read of the nailheads the heads were really the only down fall of the engine due to design. I am curious to see if making you own heads if you can get them to flow better than ported stock heads.
I know you said that you didn't want to change the port design,but the exhaust REALLY needs help. I would think that if flow wasn't impoved that people probably wouldn't want to put out the $$$ for just weight savings. I would buy a set if they were a performance upgrade to the factory heads,but not just because they are aluminum. If the ports were identical to the factory design and the same compression they wouldn't perform as good as a cast iron head because of the heat loss in the cylinder from being aluminum. For these heads to be a hit,they will need to be a performance upgrade from a factory head,or they probably won't sell very good at all. Goodluck,I hope this venture will be successful.:TU: Derek
Ahh, we ALL have our own dreams, wishes & desires to try & make our "Nails" better. I suggest doing some research on using aluminum heads. As from what I have learned & read about using aluminum heads to give the same performance as iron heads they would have to flow about 20%-25% better than what we have now & get a compression increase of about 1 1/2-2 points higher in compression to get the same performance as cast iron heads. One of the ways engines make HP is with "Heat". Since aluminum dissipates heat far faster than iron that's a drawback. You could coat the tops of the pistons, combustion chambers, valves, ports & headers (or wrapping) to try & maintain some of that heat, but now your talking about even more $$$ over the cost of the aluminum heads to hopefully have them perform like the original iron heads. Other than a weight reduction, experimental aluminum heads are 21pds. bare as opposed to iron which are 55pds. bare, personally I don't see an upside to this. On a race car 68lbs. is a significant weight reduction. On a street car I don't think there would be that much of an advantage. You would also need to be vigilant about keeping your anti-freeze up to snuff. Grant you this is just my humble opinion & don't let my thoughts discourage you in any way. Now we come to the head gaskets. You can't use shim steel on aluminum. I haven't seen ANY modern cars use them with the cast iron blocks & aluminum heads. Can't use the "Composite" gaskets that are available now as they will not have enough "Wiggle" room, for the loss of a better term, & I'm sure they would start "Fretting" soon after installation. I have talked with Cometic & they have NO interest in making gaskets for our "Nails". I, am in NO way trying to stop you from doing this. I DO NOT want to discourage you in any way. We will NEVER know until someone has the stundenes to try to improve upon a design that was aimed at low RPM torque rather than high RPM HP. As far as a tunnel ram goes. Before the tunnel ram will have ANY significant improvement it will be above the RPM capability of the majority of "Nails" now running. I know when we tried it we actually LOST HP & torque. Of course to maximize the potential would have required another cam, & who knows if that would have worked out to our advantage. Now ALL the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ come into play. Unfortunately there aren't enough of us "NailHead" nuts willing to spend the kind of $$$ it takes to "Play". Look at ALL the info Eric provided us with when he dynode his engine build. It was going to be on his $$$ until I started a thread to help him because want he was doing would benefit ALL of us "Nailers", which he did. Again, these are just my thoughts. Tom T.
Ok...so you guys tell me...the exhaust ports match the gaskets allready...and the valve guides are in the way...what would all you guys do...fill me in...do it now or forever hold your parts. (Buick parts) ---------- Post added at 07:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:56 PM ---------- The coolant is NOT a problem. I use Evans WATERLESS coolant. Www.evanscooling.com ---------- Post added at 08:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:57 PM ---------- Cool Tom...good info. I have a gasket manufacturer 8 miles from my shop...an engine builder that says things I dont understand..a powdercoater that can ceramicoat the interior of the heads if needed...a heat treating company a mile away...and much much more at my disposal...My cylinder head guy does race engines and works at the local military base as an engineer/dyno operator. I get along great with all the above really well. I also have a custom cam grind shop about 15 miles away..im excited to finally make the nailhead a performer...we all need to think positive about anyones posibilities....I want all the information I can from all to make these phenominal heads....
I agree. Unless there are some improvements made, I can't see dropping that kind of coin for stock replacement aluminum heads. The trick is going to be getting flow numbers better than a good port job, say 250/160 cfm @ 0.500", while also maintaining port velocity for torque. This is a good point. Technically for equal performance, only an increase in compression is required. The increase in compression raises the cylinder pressure, making up for the extra heat dissipated by the aluminum heads. From my experience, when running an iron headed motor at around 9.5:1, its aluminum headed equivalent can get away with about 10.5:1. Possibly more depending upon combustion chamber characteristics, quench, etc.
Mr62, I am glad someone is going to give it a try. Have you been keeping up with the threads on the 350 and race sections? A board member named Ken Betts is making race 455 heads and then mabey 350 heads. I would contact him and see what he had to go through to get this started. Might be worth a lot of good info. Would be nice to have extra metal at the ssr on both the intake and exhuste. Good luck, hope you can get this done :TU: EDIT, Just read your edit on the first post. Glad you cleared that up because I was thinking the same thing.
I'd go for a 4-valve head such as the Buick XP-300 engine. You could develop a forked rocker system where 1 push rod operates 2 valves. The valves could be substantially smaller than SBC and still equal or better the flow of most 2-valve BBC engines. For example, using a single 2.25 inch intake valve with a 3/8 inch stem equals an area of 3.87 square inches. Using two 1.625 inch intake valves with 11/32 inch stems gives an area of 3.96 square inches. Of course this is a little simplistic and you would have to supply intakes and exhaust headers and manifolds to fit the heads, but I believe that you would have to do that anyway to make significant flow improvements over a stock ported head. I had considered something along these lines when hot rodding a Buick straight 8. Good luck :TU:
The stock exhaust port is a low speed high torque one. It has nothing to do with performance. There can be major improvements done to the nailhead by changing ports a little and unshrouding the valves inside the chamber. You need a person who understands that all! :Smarty: (Headbytes maybe, he's an experienced person, google his website and youtube channel) SCE might get you some custom gaskets. Gaskets shouldn't be a problem anyway. But there is a little chance to improve exhaust port and at the same time save the exhaust manifold flange and cross-section. It's shrouding engine's performance quite a lot! So a bent exhaust manifold should work. If you'll get GetBentExhaust, who's also a Buick enthusiast, in the project, it might end up as a good collaboration. My 2 cents. p.s. LOL. GBE is yours, right, mr62buick?
If the aluminum heads are made for the same castings as iron heads, what makes them "good?" They'd only be lighter, not better. There are lots of less expensive ways to lose a few pounds. Let you better half drive the car; make the frame look like Swiss cheese: go on a diet. How many beer bellied guys do you see at the track? Lots. Think about it; a pound is a pound whether it's iron or belly fat. This venture doesn't make sense to me unless the aluminum heads are cast using a set of Gessler ported heads as a model. Just because something is made of aluminum doesn't make it perform better.
My crazy 10 cents worth - does anyone have a set of 'D' port heads and matching inlet and exhaust? If you wanted to go the whole hog and make matching parts then maybe start with the original 'steroid' heads.
I think the dport heads had the improved exh.. Same intake from what I heard. I would like to see them made off of a ported set of heads also, with extra metal in areas like ssr and inside walls and bowls. If possible less shrouding. Raised exh. floor ect.. I am drinking light beer now to combat beer belly syndrome. That combined with some better heads could make my convertible faster I hope:Smarty:
The Ds definetely had bigger ports as they needed their own exhaust manifolds. But it's not the size, it's shape that creates restriction - i.e. a very short turn that exhaust gases experience. The only way to combat that probably would be a heavy offset port (more offset than the factory one), so the short turn radius would be larger. Well, you can get it as high as you want, when designing a head, right under your head cover surface. But that would be the limit, so that the engine would look like a Nailhead. Second, the flow needs to get stabilized before the valve seat, so it must have a straight part in the port. This helps to improve valve breathing, because it increases the nozzle effect for both intake and exhaust. Yep! There will be no benefit from the heads unless they flow a lot better than stock. Cast iron heads tend to produce more HP, as mentioned above, and that's true. Smokey Yunick and Bill Jenkins used to glaze the outer (water jacket) side of combustion chamber with liquid glass (on aluminum heads) to reduce heat dissipation. But! aluminum heads are a lot easier to modify and repair.
