Hello all, I have a question about Al heads. I have a set of heads on my 73 GS that seem to work fine. The motor has like 15000 mi., a TA 212, S-divider, and exh. manifolds (needs more power). I have all ready got an Al head fund going in a special savings account. My question is; If the valvesprings work fine with my cam, can I buy some stage 1 valves from anybody and put the springs, retainers, & keepers off the stock heads & cruise? Or would there be more to buy? The price difference between the assembled & bare heads is substantial. Buying a bare set of heads, getting some valves off of E-bay, and using the springs & stuff off of the stockers is pretty close to the fundage I have accumulated for heads. I feel like I must be missing something. Am I? Can anyone give me a little insight on my little paradox? Thank you all.
Here is what your missing Bare castings are just that.. takes a bunch of work to get them turned into bolt on units. http://www.trishieldperf.com/stg_1_aluminum_head_pricing.htm A word of warning... I had a brand new STG 1 Aluminum head assembly sent to me for inspection, by a fellow Buick guy. Even as a layman, he was unimpressed with the quality of the work done on these heads. And rightly so.. we inspected them, and flow tested them.. they were fully ported, and flowed less than just our upgraded fully assembled set, and the quality of the parts used left a lot to be desired. The chambers varied 2 cc in the one head here.. that's a .2 variation in compression ratio.. The intake valves had almost no margin on them. The porting work was sloppily done. The valve Spring shims fit poorly. The valve seats were all different depths. The head was New!!! why!!! Half the valves had to have the tips ground to keep the tip height from getting too high. The chambers had the valves relieved to 4.380.... anybody here got a 4.380 bore 455? :spank: The only head gasket he can use is a Fel-Pro, since it has a 4.500 grommet in it. The TA gasket, has a 4.400 grommet.. only .010 on each side of the chamber, until your exposing the head gasket. Not good. The valve guides were sized with a reamer... valve guides should be done with a hone. Guide/valve clearance is the most critical dimension in a cylinder head. Doing valve guides with a reamer is like taking door dings out with a baseball bat. This head is not ruined, it is still usable, but it is quite a ways from what goes out the door here. I have no idea who did this head, or if the customer was even price shopping, so I won't speculate or comment on that. He may have just been led to believe that this individual could do quality work. I have not been able to touch base with him this week, as I have been away from the shop quite a bit. But if your going to spend $1400 on head castings, wait until the funds are available to put in good parts, and have them set up by a competent shop, familar with this head, and the Buick motor. It's a wise investment.
I bought bare stage 1 castings. All new parts with stainless valves, assemblty and porting I have around $2600.00 not counting shipping costs to send them out. If/when you get a set get them polished or something. I now wish I had sent them out one more time for Jim W. to make them shine... next time the car is down maybe. HTH
Jim If you buy a set of "complete" heads from TA, will most of this work be done with the exception being porting? I thought they were supposed to be "ready to run" when bought this way?
You would have to call Mike and ask them exactly what he does with his complete heads.. That is what we do to ours. JW
