J heads upgrade

I think if you did a few 'minor' porting operations on the J heads, you could reach your numbers. Steve Dulcich has alot of porting articles out there. There is some porting options that do not require a flow bench. Just common sense porting in the area that need attention. Yeah you could go to 2.02. {we would install 1.94 chevy valves in the 360 for various reasons; price, narrower valve stem, and the non tulip design added a little bit more compression. Also. you didnt need to do as much cutting and some of the heads still retained the factory hardening [did not cut our all the hardened area of the seat] . I used to port small block heads back in the day for a guy down in FL. He had a super flow bench. It seems like we only used the bench for that last bit of flow usually gained from porting the short turn radius. All the rest seemed like it was very obvious where the port needed work. Equalizing port flow was another use for the bench. Widening the push rod pinch, blending the bowl and raising the roof, port matching the intake, all this is very basic things that you can do without a flowbench. Its hard to totally screw up an LA head with bad porting believe it or not.[gonna get slammed for this comment for sure, LOL] It seems like the more you can carve out of them, the more they will flow. That short turn radius though, that is the tricky area but still common sense porting will get you very far with a J head. I guess just find some old cracked heads and start practicing. All in all I wouldnt worry about it too much. 400 horse power has been squeezed out of a 318 fairly easy so a 340 should be cake.