Just came across this thread while doing a search on Kustom headers. Herman, by chance are these the heads I sold to you? Back then, I sent one of the worst of two heads to Indy Cylinder Heads for an estimate for repair and they had quoted me the $1500. Mike from TA had a set repaired by them, that referenced them to me. The one I sent to them had multiple issues including a rocker boss that was cracked off. Sold them to someone in Milwaukee Wi. Interesting...
Hi Guy. I got my heads from a guy in the Flint, MI area about 10 years ago. He bought them new back in the 70's. He raced circle track cars with Buick motors. The motor sat for 30 years before I bought it. When I tore it down there was welding in two combustion chambers and that was even cracked. I talked to a couple of guys that raced with him and they said he used to blow up a lot of motors.
Hate to burst anyone's bubble here, but I have worked with several sets of original Stage 2 Iron heads.. Considering what I have had to do to them to get them to stop leaking water, and to put valves back in them with anything that resembles the correct tip height, I might suggest their best use is as collectors items, to sit on a bench and let your friends marvel over them. To me that limits their value, but then again, what the H do I know.. I would not pay more than $2500 for a pair. I have spent that much fixing them so guys that paid big bucks for them, could use them on their engine.. Only exception to that is if they were NOS, or if they could be inspected, and pressure checked. JW
Thanks for the info on the Stage II heads,Jim. Have always wondered how smart it would be for me to ever even consider buying a set (have had a few chances both used & NOS but was haunted by the old original reviews of how many units failed while trying to build sale-able pairs. When I bought the experimental 1970 455-four bolt main block and was in his shop, there was a beautifully detailed and rebuilt 455 complete with a set of factory Stage II heads on it. I asked about buying the whole motor or if not if he had other sets of heads and he told me he had had several sets plus the experimental tunnel ports that mine had on it. He looked at me seriously and said those are some special heads those Stage II’s. I told him it was only the second set I had seen in person & he said “Yeh those heads aren’t cheap son,that’s my last set but do you knoooooooow how much I get for a set of THOSE?” I figured we were talking thousands even back in the 1989-1990 era, but he said “I get GOOD money on those, $300 a pair!” I said you surrrrrrre you don’t have anymore? Lol I about fell over $300? Damn! Okay time to check my eyelids for holes. Nite
What is the biggest reason that the castings were so bad that only about 1/2 of them were decent? I have read Danny Manner and his crew worked on these heads during their own time, could it be lack of full production time to fix bad castings. Was the coolant passages a reason making for some thin sections?
Just a guess here, I think the Stage II heads probably suffered some of the same problems as the '67-69 400/430 heads, specifically cracking in the valve spring seat area above the coolant passages. Since the Stage II's were being developed prior to '70, there would be no "lessons learned" yet in this regard. Devon
Dennis always told me that issues arose because they made as many castings as they could, from prototype tooling. My issues with them have been porous castings leaking right thru into ports or externally, and the lower center water leak they are known for. Also from using old worn out iron heads, that have had many valve jobs, and the seats are sunk a mile. Back in the day, it was common freshen up practice to do a valve job, every time they came off, whether it needed it or not. The porosity is fixed by sealing the inside of the castings, with a product called "seals all".. works great, good rep in the industry for long lasting repairs. You fill the water jacket with it, install pressure test equipment, and then under pressure, force the liquid into the cracks and poors.. then pour the liquid back out, let it dry for a couple days, and then bake the head to cure it.. For sunk valve seats, either custom length valves, or a very careful seat installation deal. Large Pucker factor for the latter, as you almost always hit water machining for a seat, but the Seals all works there too. You do what you have to do, to save the rare casting, and make it usable. There is a fundamental design flaw in that head, which makes them difficult to seal the sand clean out hole, that is in the block deck, near the middle on the exhaust side. The profile/cross-section of the casting does not exert enough gasket down force in that area. It's the reason why the TA heads have the extra 4 bolt holes and the added casting on the exhaust side, vs the originals. All this usually comes as a shock to customer's who just paid big bucks for them. The First run TA Stage 2 Alum heads don't have that extra material. I was around a set of them back in the early 90's, with a local racer, and someone came up with the idea of welding a bar of square aluminum tubing, or it might have been bar stock, onto exhaust side of the casting, and then drilling and tapping the 4 extra bolt holes. Looked funny as hell, but it worked, and TA eventually incorporated that into the head casting. The last Stage 2 iron motor I built, we machined that bottom clean out hole in the deck to a size, and put a frost/core plug in it.. I can only imagine the nitemare for BMD had they actually released the STG 2 heads as actual RPO... I suppose it is possible that they would have found and corrected the issue... maybe... but it would not have been an easy fix. I am thinking they would have sized the coolant passage for a core plug, like I did, that worked like a champ. Of course some report they had them back in the day, and had no issues... but that is true of any mass produced casting.. they are not all the same. JW
Outside of the worn tooling why the porous iron compared to regular heads in production? Also are these the early TA Stage 2 heads?
Times 2 here. Or should I say times four, since I currently have two sets. One of the production sets that is as close to NOS as possible (well not now). And the other a vertical boss prototype set. Both never saw a grinder. But the prototype was repaired by Buick with added mounting bosses and such, as you can imagine the likes of any prototype part back then. I remember the valve tip heights on both sets were over and above a stock 455 head. Oops should I say under and below. Not sunken as most of the porous heads were. Jim had me measure them for reference for the set he had From Gary Paine. One thing I did come across were the end freeze plugs being "loose" in fitment.
I will say that all the heads I saw that had porosity issues, were ported, so I am sure that was a factor. I have seen the same thing on the alum heads, and had to repair them, due to the thinning out of the casting due to porting. While they were not "ported thru" they were thinned out to the point where any issue in the casting caused problems. To be fair, I have seen the same issues with overly ported cast iron stage 1 production heads. It's the nature of the beast with any casting, iron or aluminum. That is exactly why I said a few posts back, that if your going to lay down big money for Iron Stage 2's, make sure they are NOS or unported, lightly used castings. Yes, the TA heads in the picture appear to be early ones, with the exhaust side profiling, like the iron heads. Those heads had issues in high demand, high compression environments, which improvements from TA virtually eliminated in later castings, with more meat, and extra bolt holes. JW
Beside the fact that you want people to say," look at that,S.2 heads ! How cool is that! Beside that what are the other benefits?Alumunum S.2 heads are much better,cost a lot less,In case of problems,a lot of places can work on them.Just my 2 cents,Bruno.
