Just so you know where I'm coming from... I'm not a big fan of TA. That being said, unless Egobroke makes a head that flows 280cfm on the intake with the potential to flow a little above the 300 mark, has a proportional exhaust flow to match, AND is at least $500 cheaper than the TA heads, there would be NO WAY I would ever consider buying them over the TA heads. It would be a bad investment. The TA heads are a good product, and the price isn't that out of line with some of the other makes... not at all, considering volume. I might not like TA, but lets take a good honest look at all the factors before passing judgement. We haven't even seen the Ebrock heads yet. If history repeats itself, they will be very poor flowing by comparison, and need a lot of work (meaning $$$) to get good numbers from. If they sell them cheap enough, then they would be a good replacement head since iron heads are in limited quantity. If they are, in fact, just making a run for TA's (and bulldog's) business, I think it was a poor decision on their part. Hopefully if that is the case they won't sucker in too many people buying on brand name, although I would have to think those people would be chevy converts or didn't do their homework before purchasing. Just one guy's opinion. ________ Vaporizer wholesale
Heads One thing I forgot to mention about my talk with the folks at the Edelbrock display. They did tell me that you won't see these heads available for at least 90 days. That puts it well into spring before you would get a set. Most people will have their cars ready to go for the summer by the time the first sets are released. Not the best of timing on their part. Once again, I will pass along any info I receive. Steve
Seeing as how Ive waited on the Bulldog heads for 25 months now, this doesnt seem like an unreasonable amount of time at all. Edelbrock might beat them to the punch with production ou: I agree with the wait and see approach. Lot of biased opinions being passed, and some that are not. Just getting worked up over not alot at this point in the game. Need an unbiased opinion of them once someone puts their hands on them. Hard to draw a fair opinion of a concept at this point.
Maybe he didn't change his tune for the heads,you know aluminum heads like more timing and a hotter spark,but maybe then again you don't know.... what a laugh,any part you change is going to require tuning to new variables. :moonu:
Are you just ignorant or dumb? You made the BS comparison not me. Ask Greg gessler what he gets for a full port job on stock heads.DOH! :error:
Whoa dude, you are getting a little hot under the collar about nothing. The only one that didn't see that as too obvious to mention was you. o No:
I have no reason to be hot under the collar,sorry if you took it that way.I deal with mostly turbo6 guys who expect to change a part and pick up .3 without tuning,so thats where I was coming from. Point I am trying to make is that TA cannot be the only game in town forever and some are just going to have to accept it.Business is business. A ported set of stockers is great if you want to spend the time and do the work,but you are still 50# heavier probably. If you want to spend $1200-$1400 to have a good port job done on your stockers....fine. Nobody HAS to buy these heads,so what is all the fuss? That was the purpose of my first post in this thread and we have gotten off track from the original purpose,so I am done. I apologize for getting out of hand,i am not an eloquent speaker and have a hard time getting my point across sometimes without coming off badly.
No problem. My point was that this guy took his home-ported iron heads off and bought the edelbrocks be cause he wanted to gofaster He never could get the car to go less than .1 slower with the edelbrocks than with his iron heads. He tool the e-brocks off and put his iron heads back on. He wasn't a happy guy. I agree with you, business is business. And no, Mike T isn't in his business for the sole purpose of making us happy. It's to make a living, and hopefully do what he enjoys at the same time. Trying to make us happy is just good business! We'll all see soon enough what e-brock puts out. Maybe all of this criticism thrown at them will make them work a little harder at producing a superior product.
Hey PSmith, sorry if I got under your skin earlier; I could have stated my point of view more clearly to start with. I agree we will have to wait and see before forming any honest opinions, I do think it's cool they're doing a Buick head. I guess I just have a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to their Performer RPM line of heads. I've seen friends slow down with them compared to their old moderately and fully ported cast irons. Everyone's different, but if I spend that kind of money plus lose the stealthness of O.E.(not important to some I realize) I expect a noticeable increase in performance in return that's all. True it wasn't the Buick head so I shouldn't go by that but it's kind of hard not to, I mean why would the buicks' be any different I wonder; time will tell I guess. That being said though I hope I'm pleasantly surprised. Anyhow, enough speculation by me. Peace Out, Steve
I understand completely. Like i said I like and use TA's parts when they fit what I need. If I were bulding a 1000hp BBB,I would be looking exclusively at TA heads,but for a 500hp mill I might be able to do it with some edelbrock heads and have the repairability and lightness of aluminum for maybe a few hundred less. My main hope is it will spark an interest in making other parts for the Buick crowd.I'll cross my fingers. I know they are probably not going to put as much effort into them as the chevy and ford parts,but look at how many companies make heads for them.This might spark some interest in the "off" brands among other quality head makers.I know thats a long shot,but who knows. I personally think they would have made a killing on 350 heads and intakes. I think I might try to get a close look at a set of these heads and if they look promising,i might sell my stage1 converted heads and buy a set. I wouldn't be expecting a huge increase,but I really don't want to bother with porting my stock heads. In all honesty,I did port a set and was looking forward to using them until I broke the bolt bosses on the exhaust side trying to remove broken bolts.I had to get another set of heads,and have them converted,and the porting was just a pain.I wouldn't want to nick a seat in the heads I just spent around $600 total to pick up and convert to stage 1's. Now,if I can run some 11's on unported stage 1's i won't bother with the new heads.I have the GN to go faster than that. It is receiving a TA performance aluminum motor and heads,I expect it to go low 9s and if I am lucky maybe dip into the 8.9 range. Once again I like TA's parts,don't get me wrong.It just hit me wrong how negative everybody went on the E heads right away.I want to see more products come out for buicks regardless of who makes them.
Hey, no problem - someday I'll get fired up about something and you can rein me in. (and thanks for the cold one! :beer )
I Think TA Has good Castings and they do Flow well with very Little work or flow very well with Lot's of work. They only do Buick Parts at TA that is more than you can say about other Companys. Other Companys look at the big picture the $$$ so they get into everything and there Quality goes down the Drain. I am shure at TA they will change there head Casts around for some changes.
Here is where I have some concern for what could happen. A couple of years ago, I sold an exhaust system to one of the engineers at Flowmaster, he said it was for his car. Now Flowmaster has 2-1/2 & 3" muscle car exhaust systems. Now TA sells an extremely small fraction of what we used to, all of this happened in the year that I was gone. Once again, this market has been around for 30 years and no one was offering exhaust systems until Buick guys like Torque Tech, TA and the GS Club stepped up. Now they just step into the market and corrupt it for the smaller companies. Exhaust was already our tightest (with regards to profit) product line. I wouldn't be surprised if they become our first discontinued product. Currently we are plagued by knock off copies with regards to our rear end girdles, especially the Ford 8.8. There seems to be two different thought processes by the pirates. One group began by grinding off our name on the inside and machining it off on the outside and claiming it to be their own. Eventually this led to them making their own. Unfortunately it is simple to "splash" a copy of a casting like the cover. But all of the other aspects are sub quality. Another group makes their own and claims it to be a TA. Problem is that people are under the impression that they are genuine TA and when there is a warranty issue (because we guarantee for life) we are sending them replacement parts for free. And when I mentioned there were two groups it is multiple in each group, I think right now there are about 6 seperate knock off rear covers and they are all less expensive, of course, but they are all inferior as well. TA spent the time to get the covers evaluated by Roushe and Ford. Ford stepped up and buys quite a few from us. Roushe loved our cover, but one of the knock off companies, undercut us and they went with that one. Now they have been experiencing failures. A few months ago they had a rear end fail at a race. One of our best dealers was vending at the show and offered one of the displays to them to finish the race. That rear had our cover, but did not have the upgraded internals that Roushe uses on theirs. Not only did that rear finish the race but went on to other races after that. We'll see were that goes. Food for thought, Dave
Definitely got a good point there.I know you are telling the truth about the knockoffs,you can see them everywhere. I doubt that Edelbrock would steal any of TA's designs,but more than likely try to improve slightly upon the stock head. TA has done an excellent job re-engineering some of the dimensions on their heads for increased performance,and it does take time and interest to do that.They deserve credit for that. But I can see where there would be some market share for even aluminum copies of the stock head,for other reasons than just added airflow.
Now Dave, in the exhaust example, couldn't one argue that TA did to Torque Tech what flowmaster did to TA? I'm thinking this from memory of the timetable, but it seems they were a bit ahead of TA. You should have patented the cover or some of its attributes. 20/20 hindsight, right? Every time I see one of those covers, I think "another TA ripoff"
Yeah...like the ones with "GS" embossed into them ?? they couldn't even get the font type correct ou: :spank:
.....not at $1800 when you could spend a few hundred more and get out of the box flow #'s better than most well ported stage1
It's not even $1800 -- it's $1800 plus whatever the rockers cost. Ready-to-bolt-on T/A S1 SE's are $2400-$2500. Seperate the business aspect of who you should spend your money with and the availabilty issues and compare the heads on performance, price and quality and, in my mind, it's a no-brainer. IF (and it's a big IF) the EB's are nothing more than a copy or close to a copy of a stock cast one, then what's the point? PLENTY of cast ones are still available and a good bowl job is cheap and a good bang for the buck. Repairability? Get a better engine builder, cuz if you're at a level where breakage is a more likely, then you won't be using cast or EB's anyway. Want 500 streetable HP - plenty of ways to get there w/o spending 2k plus on heads. Edelbrock gave us the B4B in the 60's - not even designed for the 455. Poor distribution, runner volume, etc. Cars going 9 seconds with this intake are doing so DESPITE the intake and will most assuredly pick-up with an SPX or SP1. Without even a hint that I'm aware of (kind of like the heads), they gave us the Performer. Yippie. Re-introduce the old B4B. Again, yippie. And now the heads. I wonder if $200 worth of grinding on them will give the same flow improvement results as $200 worth of grinding on T/A's S1's? Maybe there is a market for people who just want aluminum heads, who knows? o No: Performance-wise, Bulldogs I would think, are more of a competitor to T/A than EB's. To have a market, Bulldogs had to be at least as good as T/A's flow-wise and no more expensive. Why would EB's be any different? If Bulldog ever get the bugs worked out and start making them available, I would think people would jump all over them, especially since they are $500 less (from what I've seen) for the assembled versions that flow quite well right out of the box. We'll have to wait for some hands-on experience with the EB's. I'm sure at that point, there will be some good, spirited debate too! :laugh:
