What's the Deal with the buick/Rover head for TA Performance?

Mike,
Can you give us some details? Im sure somewhere this information is in this thread, but I didnt want to go through 14 pages to find out valve sizes, flows, chamber sizes, etc. Like Sean I wondered what is included at that price. Thanks

 

Sorry guys I should have clarified that, $2795 Assembled (Valve job, springs, guides, valves etc) and I think bare castings are $1500. Tomorrow I'll take some updated pictures if anything major has changed since the last time I photographed a pair and post a press release.

 

Awesome to hear, I hope they sell like hot cakes!

 

That's great news Mike, and I'm very relieved to see some sanity in the domestic pricing. I think you will do very well at that price point. Since there will be a delay in getting the second run to market, there will undoubtedly be a fair number of buyers who will not wait regardless of the premium. Hopefully enough of them to allow your aussie partner to profit before he has to drop his prices to move the product. I also would not be surprised to see you receiving enough advance orders to cover production well before the first run sells. Regrettably I do not expect to be ordering for awhile yet, as I have a fresh set of 300 heads to break in and test first, but perhaps sometime after the first of the year.

So who will be the first to put a set of these on their 350? Just need a cam, an intake, and a set of Sanderson headers. It's very obvious we have people who can handle the job.

JB

 

Before I throw $'s at this waay overdue head, I want to know things like valve centerlines, cut for what size valves, stem sizes, chamber size,deck thickness, use a Rover rocker cover ? Chamber and unported port cc's? Legal for SCCA ? Cheers, roverman.

 

This subject has been quiet for a few months..

 

ta rover intake/heads and a cam should do italong with sanderson headers?..
hmmm if i seriously find a roller nova i'll do this

 

bump

 

Now is the time to push for 350 heads, The future is now. People are hungry, haven't spent no money in 3 years now, need to get something going, time for some new toys, need an upgrade, time is now to buy.

Time for the ship to sail!

 

I don't think that's being very realistic. Today's economic climate isn't what it once was and trying to push TA into anything strikes me as a particularly bad ploy. They are as aware of the market as anyone else, but it has to make sense in economic terms, meaning available funding and resources plus return on investment. Maybe the ROI is there but is the available funding and resources? To answer that question I think you only have to look at the deal with TRS that it took to get the Rover heads made. Is a deep pocket going to step forward and put up the money to buy the first production run and possibly also pay part of the development costs? Who might they be? Without that I can't see the schedule being pushed forward no matter how much noise you make.

But that does not mean you can't have an aluminum headed 350.

JB

 

It was economically viable in 2007 and the same talk was happening then. Not enough support, not enough this, not enough that. There is a market for anything if you want to do it bad enough. Has racing all of a sudden stopped? No, are there people here building cars, yes. The economy is stopped for people that do not have jobs. For everyone else it is business as usual.

If I wait till the perfect time to start asking for everyone to support this I might as well Get the JB-Weld out. This thing has been talked about for 8 + years so when will the best time to start to ask for 350 heads.

Hey, if we wait long enough we wont have to worry about it, we will be too old to care. This should have been done in 1995 when Sonny seal was campaining that all steel car with the 350 running in the 11's.

Want to know what happened then? The Grand National sucked all the juice away from anyone ever thinking about building a 350. Then it was, why not just put in a 455. I guess I should have, then I would not be on here trying to get some aluminum heads for a 350. Plus I would have an 11 second car instead of a 13 sec. car and I would not care about a 350. But I like to be different. That is why I have a Buick Skylark instead of a Chevelle. :bla:

 

I have more time to wait compared to alot of you guys, but i still dont want to obviously..
so, if TA 350 heads arnt out by the time my skylark is 80% finished i'll be the first to jump on the rover heads on 350 block the following season if someone hasnt already

a roller regal would be a good platform for this along with huge turbos

so all i'm saying is i'd be more then happy to see a rover to sbb350 conversion package/items or rover heads

 

Well yeah, and I think we've gone almost as far as we can go on the Rover headed 350 without putting parts together. We already know the 300/340 heads will go on the 350 block and the pushrod angle isn't bad, that's been done already. We have guys who can make the single plane intake for it, and Sanderson has been making the headers for years. The last step is for someone to call a few cam makers and get a price on either a flat tappet or a roller cam based on the 350 blank with the 300/340 lobe pattern. Obviously with a billet blank that's a minor change. For a flat tappet it's still an unknown. But once that's done it just comes down to parts selection and assembly. If a guy just wants to prove the concept, any old SBB heads and 2nd hand 350 short block would be sufficient, along with an iron 340 intake and cast exhausts. Even used gaskets would serve the purpose.

The cost is reduced to the cam and the time basically. So I just have to ask, "How badly do you want it?"

And again, you get guys buying TA-Rover heads to bolt them on 350 Buicks and how long do you really think it's going to be before TA decides an aluminum 350 is worth doing?

JB

 

obviously if alot of 350 guys did buy and install rover heads i'm sure that would perhaps bump the timeline up for AL 350 heads...but realisticly I dont really see heads for the 350 being produced in the next 5 years...

 

That could be. They have a projected timeline for development work and I believe Mike Jr. said there were a couple other projects ahead of it. Much depends on how much money is available for the development work of course. So short term my money would be on the 350/Rover or 340/350 or whatever you think it would be best to call it. Probably be a year or more before we see one of those finished anyway and everyone else will probably wait to see how that turns out. So it might be 5 years before the idea catches on anyway. Still, I think that is going to be the surest route to an aluminum headed 350.

But hey, I've already got my aluminum headed 350. I cheated and bored a 340 .050 over and used '64 300 heads and a blower.:TU:

JB

 

well I emailed 2 company about making a 350 cam with 340 order..
we'll see i guess

 

Sounds like a good start Mike, we'll see where it goes. With all the cam makers out there don't get discouraged if those two aren't interested. It shouldn't be too hard to find one that is. On my custom grind I ended up with Cam Crafters. The nailhead guys know him, though we don't hear much about him on this forum.

The biggest unknown has to do with the blanks. If they are cast at near-net shape it may not be possible to grind them to the 340 lobe pattern. But there may be enough meat there to do it, or it may not be that hard to have a run of blanks modified enough to do it. Most cam grinders are going to be on pretty good terms with their foundry. A lot may depend on how hot the cam needs to be. Of course for a billet cam it wouldn't matter.

JB

 

Jim hes one of the guys i've contacted..
his his responce:


Michael,
For enough money almost anything is possible. What is the purpose of using the Rover heads? Aluminum heads do not make more power by virtue of the Aluminum material alone. In fact there is a disadvantage as they conduct heat from the combustion process away from the cylinders much more quickly than cast iron. Heat=power. This can be thwarted by special coatings. The weight is an advantage in some applications. The 215s and the later Rovers can be stroked by using 300 or 340 cranks. There may well be some high performance aluminum heads for 350 Buicks that may offer better performance than the Rover heads.
That said, there are a couple of options to changing the lobe sequence. The simplest would be to find a round lobe billet and then you can have any lobe sequence you want. This option will require roller lifters, adding another several hundred dollars. It would likely cost well over $1,000-1500.00 for the cam. Production time is usually at least 60 days due to the need to have it heat treated. Our heat treater is in Wisconsin. Another would be to procure a 215-340 cam casting before the journals are ground. MAYBE the rough castings have larger bearing journals than the 350. This is not as easy as it sounds because the factories do not like to do ANYTHING in small numbers or out of a regular production sequence. Also the rough size of the 340 cam may still be smaller than the 350 or at least not have enough material to clean up at the 350 size. Another option would be to weld up the journals on a semi finished 340 cam and grind them to the 350 size. Not many people can do this well but I have a friend who manufactures crankshafts and can likely do this. I would recommend doing two of these in case some disaster trashes the 1st cam. If nothing happens then you are a few steps ahead to doing another one and welding two cams would be way less expensive than doing them separately. You don't have to finish them both at the same time. This would offer the shortest production time. Maybe as short as 4 to 6 weeks. Cost might be as little $500-$800.00. If you want to pursue this, we should get right on it. We are a small company and racing season will soon be upon us. We normally do special projects like this from the end of September through December or January. We are very capable of doing this project in a competent and timely manner but time is of the essence right now. Thanks for your interest

Yours truly,

Charles Reichard
President

PS; Were you referred to us or did you just find us in a magazine or on the web? Our phone number is (828) 681-5183

 

so which route of the 3 would you think is the best to take Jim?

 

In my opinion:

If anyone is interested in running the Rover heads on a Buick then the best bet would be to build a 340. No fancy cam required, a lot less hassle. No need to work too hard for cubic inches when under boost.