Highest flowing sbm heads?
Wow. 29 pages of this. Gonna have to go back to post 1 and re read wm all again but not now.
It's great to get these humongous flow numbers but there comes a point that everyone isn't going for 10000 hp mountain motors for 1/4 mile competition, on which most of the time when you get into the higher brackets the car is no longer street legal anymore, for other reasons ... for those of us building a nice street cruiser or even stoplight drag car, there is no way an engine in these categories can even use that much flow.... Just because the heads flow "x" doesn't mean the engine can possibly use it, will only flow what they're capable of....
That said, without a pissing match, a lot of us are limited to "stock on hand", live paycheck to paycheck, but just want to have a little fun....
Considering the 302 heads, they used to be thought of as the "cats ***"... Now everyone says they're garbage.
Is there a chart somewhere that tells from worst to best (maybe by casting numbers) how factory heads rank?
Granted when ported some of that goes out the window.....
But in my case I have a 318 that I just want to "wake up a little " on a car that will never be raced, still has its original '163 open chamber heads, that have never been off since the engine was originally built on the assembly line... It runs alright for what it is, but the guides are shot, I put new seals on with heads still in the car, which improved things( it had sat a while, was using more oil than I thought it should once I got it on the road again)
I HAVE a set of fresh from the machine shop 302s, all new valves,etc .. that I want to swap on .. I will be going to a mild step up cam and a 4bbl, at the same time. Car currently is bone dead stock (still running lean burn even which will also be coming off at same time)
I'm NOT pulling the whole engine, it has less than 60k miles from new. And I've had it long enough to know that for sure the odo hasn't flipped.
I do plan on going back into those 302s and just cleaning up the casting burrs, and smoothing things out a bit.... Nothing crazy.
All else the same, now the "experts" say that it won't make a difference whether I leave the original heads or put my 302s on?????
It all depends on what you want from your combo. In my case I ain't running a tach but have before on other cars. You guys may resent this but seriously I doubt this engine has ever seen 4000 rpm.... Even if I had the money for (example) Edelbrock heads, in a case like mine would they really make THAT much difference in performance????
That said I have done the magnum head swap into an LA a couple of times over the years and yes that did make a difference. But I don't have any good ones of those around at the moment...