SM Head Modifications on a budget

Both you and Brian have done (way)more of these heads than I have, and have gotten far higher numbers from them than any I’ve had on my bench.
I thought the 285-290 numbers were extremely lofty goals for these heads without reworking the SSR.
I figured there was some area of the port that when tweaked in just the right way was going to unlock some magic, and I had never figured it out.
It doesn’t appear that secret area has been discovered in this thread quite yet.

Of course, the more telling test about the value of reworking the SSR, and the added flow it would bring would be……..
Do everything that goes into the 290cfm package…… except the SSR.
Put the heads on a suitable short block that could exploit them(600hp & 400+ cubes to use up the area), see what it makes.
Then pull the heads off, do nothing but rework the SSR and reinstall the heads, and retest.
See what the gains are.
That would basically be a test between flow vs area.
The flow would be noticeably higher, but the area would hardly change at all.