Has ANYONE driven their 350 with the aluminum heads?

With the way things are now in the world selling hi performance parts is gonna be harder and harder....especially for old pushrod engines....availability will only get worse across the board

 

The gear heads are dwindling, nowadays people just go to work, then rush home to water their plants

 

You're right. I go to local cruise ins all summer and it's rare to see anyone under 50. I don't even see the tuners with the rice burners anymore.

 

My oldest son never brings his car to the local cruse night. We will do a morning cars and coffee though cause it’s less crowded. (If you get there early enough)

 

Thank you for answering that and I kinda figured it would cost up to 3400 to get heads and ported which is not too bad but not great either.
But when Demko was talking about upward of 4 grand plus to get level 2 porting I just see that as a little hard to swallow.
What I would have liked to see is the heads having a little more on the porting than my somewhat ported iron heads and keep the cost at 3200 or under for ported aluminum 350 heads.

You probably know how much the irons flowed on the 455 heads and the alums for that is up there pretty good on flow. Maybe the percentages between stock on the alums are the same for each set of heads for 455 and 350. I just felt we could have used a little more porting for those 350 alums for the price as I would be ok with 32-3300
for solid level porting and I feel that should be 280 on the intake and 180 on exhaust at least something like that. I would be in for that.

I just think that with this solid cam I am running I think that with the ported alum heads and bump the comp to 11.1 I think I can hit a 12.99, I managed a 13.28 with this cam and I am blowing oil smoke out the right side probably from bad valve guides.
Now if you ask me that would be a pretty respectable number coming from a 350 Buick.
So now all I got to do is talk TA into giving me the head with good port job for 3300-3400$ right!

 

How about some pictures of these "mysterious" 350 heads...

 

The stage 1 SE heads came with as cast ports that flowed as good as a well ported set of iron heads. I wonder why they didn't do the same on the 350 heads?

 

Buick BB building has always been a expensive hobby compared to others. So why would the SBB be any different?
The AL 350 headed on Mike Jr's car made a so called 480 hp so they do perform when ported well and big valves used. Maby the lack of big flow numbers out of the box is because they are a starter port and to standard valve sizes?
Yes they are expensive but they do help whether because of the weight savings and the probably extra 20 hp from better flow out of the box.

Covid hit at the wrong time but TA also took a long long long time to get these done from the beginning and now they say they cant find a CNC porter.
Does TA not pay a good wage?? Only they know but people need jobs and being a machinist in the car performance field is a job I think people love especially on the rarer brands.
I can't see Jim W and Ken B not LOVING going to work everyday
TA already have the CNC machine..and if rented/leased and just sitting its not good.

 

I am also guessing they have other products that are less trouble and produce a lot more $. Like 12 bolt Diff covers.

 

My flow sheet

 

How much was that level 1 porting Steve? And did you use TA 3/8" stem valves?
11/32" & beehives might be nice.
Intake is still more flow than my home ported irons. Going to have to look into that ...

 

Valve stems are 11/32” porting was $700
My opinion is it was worth the cost for the aluminum heads. The cost of doing all the work needed to the cast iron heads would have been less but never matched performance wise. Rich my machinist was very impressed with quality of TA’s products which wasn’t an easy task.

 

Take them to Angelucci he got me 266.97in 191.54ex @.600 Irons 3/8 valves

 

Bet Angelucci would charge less porting aluminum instead of iron. That iron dust is nasty.

 

Those are solid numbers for an iron 455 head....I they are accurate that's very impressive

 

For the 350 aluminum heads, I’m confused, supposedly the “out of the box” @ .500 intake is 247
Exhaust is ……………………167.3
Ported numbers are @.500 242 ( intake)
165 on the exhaust @ .500
Am I reading the charts right and comparing apples to apples??
The numbers went down

 

It certainly appears that way or we’re both confused.

 

Different flow bench, different day, Straight out of box flow #'s are from the manufacturer, so they should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

Would have been interesting to see what they flowed before porting, then the after numbers.