No repro at all. Strictly used stockers. You can have yours ported or call TA Performance and inquire about their upcoming (who knows exactly when) 350 heads.
Just call Jim at PAE and ask for a set of ported heads... he may be able to provide core for you. Not a problem to make over 450 hp without power adder with stocker ported heads.
Spending the money to port, remove and install a set of stock iron heads yields about 30 horsepower. In my opinion it just not worth the expense to just do that. Wait for the aluminum heads if you can. They will be a better design and yield a lot more. Then rebuild the engine if you like but the total tab is likely to be $5000--$7000.00.
It is too worth it if you do the head swapping yourself. The stock 350 head is a fantastic design already and it only requires porting and polishing to get them to flow as good as other small block heads, even aluminum ones. The TA heads are hands down NOT worth waiting for because there's no solid word that they are even going to be developed.
Carson --thsi is simply not a correct statement. If it is worth it to him for 30 or so horsepower then he can do it. For him to be left with the impression that porting his heads alone will get him to 450 hp is nonsense. He is starting with either a 230 hp SAE or 260 Hp SAE 71 engine. So you would add 30 or so in and he will have 300hp total or so hp in the end. To lead him to believe that you can port those stock heads to what a redesigned aluminm head will yield is incorrect and misleading. To get a feel for benefit of iron heads being ported alone check out this thread at post 18. This info is based on JW's dyno experience. http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?t=168303
I compared my heads flow numbers at .600 lift 270/180 to the SBF Edlebrock heads which only flow 249/174. You can download edelbrock's flow sheet!!! I am not misleading anybody! And I'm sure everyone else would agree with that! Stop bashing the stock SBB heads! http://www.edelbrock.com/automotive_new/mc/heads/pdf/flow_data.pdf
yea, on a totaly stock or stock to maybe mild it wont be worth it but for a good performance build it'll be worth it
Apart from the open chambers on the 350 heads, is there much difference in the bowls and ports between 350 and 455 heads? Just curious.
I defense of Jim Lore he is quoting an engine builder, but he is discussing a 455 instead of a 350. I would bet a lot of money that the amount of power increase will be directly related to compression, headers and if the 350 heads have the larger exhaust valve. I also would venture to say that if the same air flow percentage increase(10% for estimate) was given to both the 350 and 455 the smaller engine would have a larger percentage of HP increase. That is because 300HP to 330HP is a larger percentage increase than 400HP to 430HP. A question that I have relative to the long stroke of the 350 would be does port restriction have a larger effect on HP because it is so dependent on intake stroke for to power. Without a good job on the heads I doubt you can come close to any decent Volume Efficiency with the SBB.
Here is an illustrative example from an actual 1971 Buick 350 build up with porting, larger valves, improved cam, more compression than a stock 71, special intake manifold set up, and shorty headers. The engine dynoed at 350 horsepower and 400 ft lbs of torque. It took $6500 to hire someone to get to that level of performance with good street manners retained. http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?t=153248 This referenced build up goes way beyond just porting heads which was the point of reference for the question above. So I am just giving this member some accurate information based on real dyno test results and not estimates or guesses. Also my post above has nothing to do with bashing stock Buick 350 iron heads. Rather I am pointing out that improvements will be made in redesigned aluminum heads such they will perform substantially better than stock iron heads will perform, whether they be ported or unported. Otherwise, there would be no market for these new aluminum 350 heads everyone keeps requesting be made by TA. So based on real test results my comments above are right on the money.
I just wanted to make perfectly clear, that these heads flow very well compared to other aftermakert small block heads. That is a FACT! So anyone saying that modifying them is a waste of time is full of bull.
Carson you continue to miss the point. To pay say $1000 (shipping, parts, rebuilding, labor etc) to remove, send off and reinstall just stock iron heads for perhaps an increase of 30 or so horsepower may be construed by this person to not be worth the money. No one said he would get nothing from porting his stock heads. Given the likely extent of improved performance I am suggesting he may not deem the results worth the effort to do just this. He may want to do the whole engine instead given this information. He may want to fathom the chances of getting higher performance TA aluminum heads later. From the actual 455 head experience we know that the advent of aluminum repros has to a great extent made the use of iron heads, for upper end performance purposes, obsolete. So let's not be so defensive here and give this new person the accurate information he needs and deserves so he can make some choices made on objective numbers. And for you trying to compare your head flow to an an aluminum Eldebrock 455 head at .6" lift, you have to compare ported to ported heads across all the referenced lift points for both the exhaust side and the intake side. Actually, you really need to do it for the superior designed TA aluminum heads while using the same flow bench.
Theres your problem, a lot of edelbrocks heads really dont flow well, not much better than ported stock heads. If your looking for more power have a set of stock heads ported, dont wait around for our new heads because that could be quite a ways off, we still have a few projects lined up ahead of 350 heads. The ports may be small but there is a Lot material just sitting there that can be hogged out. The biggest problem is the time required to do so to get the heads to flow really high numbers because of all the material that needs to come out. Remember though at that point its getting a little "extreme" for a lack of better words (in terms of paying someone, its gonna start getting $$ and you start playing cat and mouse with the flow numbers and the porting porting), a good deep porting and clean up would really help unless you want to go full out. You could always chip away at it yourself too.
