I am trying to learn about the Range Rover aluminum heads. I've read about them, but can't find any technical info on them. How are the intake and exhaust ports as compared to the 1964 300" aluminum heads? Bigger, or just the same? What are the intake and exhaust valve sizes? I've spent some time locating a 1964 300" V8 with the cast iron block and aluminum heads, and wonder if the Rover heads were "better enough" to justify going with them instead of working over the stock Buick units. Or, for that matter, biting the bullet on weight and going with cast iron 340-350 heads. My goal with the 1964 300" engine was to get a light weight motor, giving up a little power in the process, but not a large amount of power. Also, the plan is to put in a 350 crank, so feeding the extra cubes is in the mix too.
If your wanting extra power with light weight, and your wanting to drop in a 350 crank, I'd just source a 350, and wait for the aluminum heads for the 350:TU:
Might want to look at the later model Rover engines that had more CID maybe the later heads had more flow for the larger CID engine? Other than that they were the same smaller than a '64 300 head design from the Buick 215. As far as the intake and exhaust ports the Rover heads have the same orientation as a 300/340 head but smaller ports for the Rover, the '65 to 67 heads were the same for the 300/340 engines. In '68 the 350 came out with a different port layout for both the intake and exhaust that is NOT interchangeable with a 300/340 engine without major customization. Something that I haven't seen done is '64 300 aluminum heads on a 340. But yeah if you want heads that have decent flow that will make some power you might want to get the TA aluminum Rover heads and have them race ported that will get around 260 CFM from the intake side according to the downloadable TA catalog that can be found at the TA website.(I don't think the Rover heads are in the online catalog, you have to download the downloadable one for that info?) A set of ported '64 300 heads if you're lucky will flow around 177 CFM on the intake side and around 130 CFM on the ex side! Slightly better intake flow with the cast iron heads and a little less on the ex side. The cast iron 300 4bbl intake will flow more air than a '64 300 aluminum intake as well. If you're good at welding aluminum then the '64 intake could be dissected, reworked and welded back together to make it flow better than the cast iron one. The reason the aluminum intake has smaller ports is because its water cooled meaning the ports are surrounded by coolant from the bottom and partially on the top, the choke even works off of coolant! You would have to open the intake up from the bottom re-route the coolant the making the ports larger would be a lot of work but not real hard if you can weld aluminum. If that's something you think you could do with the intake then the aluminum heads could use the same treatment to make the ports larger so they can flow some air!? CUSTOM! That will be the route I will be taking when the time and $$ are there to do that. The 2 never seem to align at the same time very often! LOL Good luck and make sure you start a build thread in the small bock section when you get that far, looking forward to following it.
> How are the intake and exhaust ports as compared to the 1964 300" aluminum heads? Bigger, or just the same? They are much smaller. The ports of the later Rover 4.0L and 4.6L heads are essentially the same size as the Buick 215 and earlier Rover V8 heads at 1.575" tall x 0.9375" wide intake and 1.25" x 0.8" exhaust. The valve sizes are slightly larger than the earlier heads at 1.57" intake and 1.3525" exhaust. 1964 Buick aluminum 300 head intake ports are 1.75" tall by 1" wide and the exhaust are 1.5" x 0.93" exhaust. The stock valve diameters are 1.625" intake and 1.313" exhaust. I used larger 6000 Series Ferrea Buick V6 Stage 1 valves in my ported Buick 300 heads (1.775"/1.5"). > I've spent some time locating a 1964 300" V8 with the cast iron block and aluminum heads, and wonder if the Rover heads were "better enough" to justify going with them instead of working over the stock Buick units. For what you want to do, porting the 1964 Buick 300 heads would be the way to go. Check the water passages to make sure they aren't too corroded first. The guy I used to port my heads is: Jon Carls of JDC Engineering in Minonk, IL. > But yeah if you want heads that have decent flow that will make some power you might want to get the TA aluminum Rover heads and have them race ported that will get around 260 CFM from the intake side according to the downloadable TA catalog Be aware the TA heads have the much smaller Buick 215/Rover V8 size combustion chambers and will need dished pistons for a streetable compression ratio (a very large dish with a Buick 350 crank). As soon as I get the chance, I'll be sending Jon a set of the TA Performance Rover heads to see what he can do with them. Your intake manifold may be a limiting factor. In our dyno testing, we've found that on engines with limited head flow (compared to the displacement), a single plane intake can outperform a dual plane, even at low RPM. No aftermarket intakes exist for the Buick 300 but Rover/Buick 215 intakes can be adapted using spacers and a valley cover. I've never tried it but you might be able to mill out a 2 barrel Buick 300 aluminum intake to serve as the adapter. There are several single plane intake available for the Rover V8 (Huffaker, Harcourt, Willpower). I'd stay away from the Offy 360 Equaflow. It's more of a plenum with very short runners and didn't test well. There are also Rover EFI intake manifolds that could be similarly adapted. I'm looking into having one of the Rover EFI 3.9L upper/lower EFI intake manifolds ported for an 4.2L Rover application with ported Rover heads. > Might want to look at the later model Rover engines that had more CID The largest displacement production Rover V8 was 4.6L (278 CID) which is less than the Buick 300. You can offset grind the Rover crank or the Buick 300 crank has the same journal size so will install and make 292+ cubic inches (depending upon overbore). Besides the aluminum block, the later 4.0L and 4.6L Rovers have some nice features like cross-bolted main caps and a cast aluminum oil pan with windage tray. The front dress from a Buick 300 can be bolted on. > A set of ported '64 300 heads if you're lucky will flow around 177 CFM on the intake side and around 130 CFM on the ex side! My ported Buick 300 heads flowed 200 CFM intake and 153 CFM exhaust. A second ported set we had done were in the mid 190's. Both used the larger Stage Buick V6 valves (on larger seats) mentioned earlier. Stock heads with some clean up work were 154 CFM intake and 116 CFM exhaust. Dan Jones
Dam Dan, those are some awesome flow numbers on your 300 heads!!!! If those are cast iron head flow numbers I think that's around what the HRM guy that did the sbb 300 stroker got. I was referring to the '64 aluminum heads, the number I quoted were for Gessler and D&D for the '64 300 aluminum heads. If the numbers from your head porter are for '64 aluminum heads that is impressive!! Have you ever considered using sbb 350 heads on a Rover engine? The older '68-'72 castings are supposed to flow better than the later heads, I think the intake flows around 220 CFM without porting!! To bad they are cast iron!! Derek
> If the numbers from your head porter are for '64 aluminum heads that is impressive!! Both the ported sets and the unported set are 1964 Buick 300 aluminum heads. > the number I quoted were for Gessler and D&D for the '64 300 aluminum heads. Did they remove the guides and replace the seats? I gave the head porter a damaged cylinder head to experiment on. He bored holes into the casting to see where the limits were. Also, he had to remove the guides to get the cutter into bowls and the larger valves required larger seats. If you limit yourself to what will fit on the existing seats, that will limit the maximum flow you can get out of the heads. We probably could have gone a little larger on the intake valve at the expense of the exhaust valve and improved the intake flow. The TA Rover heads moved the valve locations to permit larger valves. > Have you ever considered using sbb 350 heads on a Rover engine? No. I have an aluminum itch that cast iron just doesn't scratch and there are other problems with putting Buick 350 heads on a Rover block besides the putting all that weight up top. The different port layout the 300sbb_overkill mentions means you'd be looking at a custom intake manifold and custom headers, plus there are differences in upper end oiling, etc. Not worth it for my applications. Dan Jones
First of all, this site is 100% super, in that everybody is totally willing to share all their considerable knowledge, and I thank everybody for pitching in. The easy way out of the "350 dilemma" is to just get a 340, bore it .060" (or more) and put the aluminum 300 heads on it. But I can't leave "well-enough" alone, so am trying to go with the 300/350. It looks like the 300 aluminum heads are the way to go for a street machine. My thought is to go with a Speedway Motors 1934 Ford Club Cab pickup, the SBB and a 4L65 (or equivalent transmission). I'm just looking for a 1-off engine with good mid range torque and around 375 hp. Mayhaps approaching 400 hp is achievable. Hydraulic lifters and 5000-5500 rpm redline. As I get into this, all sorts of possibilities are turning up. In researching the stroker part of the project, I've come up with a really good con rod solution, which is the Eagle I-beam #SIR-6000-SPLW. Its a small journal Chev rod, 6.0" c/c, was designed by Eagle for use in strokers (per their literature), and has cap screws instead of bolt-and-nut. The cap screws will give a little extra clearance over conventional bolts, and the I-beam profile should help out over an H-beam. The rod's pin end only has to be honed out .004" o/s to use Jeep 258 pistons. They go for$238/set at Summit. Regarding intake manifolds, I'm thinking outside the box. Taking a look at the Edelbrock Ford 351W 2x4 intake, its an air gap unit, and the back half of the manifold will feed the back cylinders of my SBB 300/350. Sectioning out the middle of the manifold, and then the front of the manifold will feed the front cylinders of my motor. The SBF is at 4.38" bore centers (vs the SBB 4.24"), so the rear of each half of the Edelbrock unit will have to be cut and rewelded at the correct spacing. Depending on where the flanges end up, some fabrication may have to be done. The Ford hot water return will have to be machined off and be replaced by a SBB thermostat housing. "No problemo." The carb mounting flanges will have to be cut out and a 1x4 carb adapter plate bolted on. The SBF intake ports are basically the same as the SBB, so adjustments will be minimal. All this and I've only been into the project for a few weeks. This is fun.
Adapting a Ford intake might not be the way to go. The Ford V8 you're thinking of using the forward cylinder is the opposite as a sbb and any other GM v8 except the Nailhead not sure if there are any other old GM V8 platforms that have the number 1 cylinder on the passenger side besides the Nailhead. Why you ask this makes a difference, because with the number 1 forward cylinder on the opposite side as a sbb the ports will be harder to make line up. The lower deck 289-302 intake would be easier to adapt because you could make your adapter plates thicker to transition the ports to the sbb 300 heads. Street cruiser 375 to 400 HP will be a tough number to hit without massive porting(the HRM Buick 300 stroker build made 349 HP with around 425 ft lbs of torque), would probably be a good idea to have Dan Jones's guy port your heads if those are the numbers you are shooting for. If you read my post you would see that the 350 heads flow more un-ported than a massively ported 300 head. If you're good with fabrication with the aluminum welding you can look at machining the heads opened and welding them back together with bigger ports with a better line of sight to the valve. As for a better adaptable intake take a look at a LS after market intake(has the correct number 1 forward cylinder) machine off the top of even a 2bbl '64 300 intake so you end up with the bottom that is enough there to keep the oil in and to bolt it to the heads. With an LS aftermarket intake you can mill off the mounting flanges then cut off the runners and relocate them on the bottom of the 300 intake then re-attach them to the top of the intake on a relocated hole in the plenum.(easy peasy!) If you keep the flange thickness on the LS intake's ports you might not have to add material to make the runners the right length? In other words cut the flange out in between the ports to maintain that thickness. Here's a SWEET set of rods that would work great that you would probably never be able to break; http://www.ebay.com/itm/391093493565?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT The same narrowing would be needed as the 6.00" sbc rods and opening the wristpin hole the same. But you would have to find a different piston with around a 1.200" compression distance.(there are less expensive nascar take out rods that can be used as well in different lengths. Just make sure the big end is thick enough because a lot of them are thinner than the Buick .845" thickness.) A set of AutoTec 4032 forged sbb 350 pistons are customizable at no extra charge that you could get with the 1.200" compression height with a customizable dish volume to get the compression ratio you want for running pump gas. Here's a link to the pistons; http://www.buyracingparts.com/pisto...totec-forged-350-buick-dished-piston-kit.html Here' a cool combo that will work great; http://www.ebay.com/itm/FORD-CHEVY-...ING-/121552673877?hash=item1c4d1a9c55&vxp=mtr The above rods are make an offer or buy it now for $399. Here's the pistons that will work with the 6.125" rods above; http://www.summitracing.com/parts/uem-kb186-060/overview/ They will be about .050" in the hole, a little bit off the deck and down the road. If you decide to go with these nascar rods the crank rod journals will need to be cut down to 1.889" for the Honda rod bearing the nascar take out use so you can have the crank stroked .100" while they cut down the rod journals that way the deck would only need a clean up cut to square the deck.(for every .100" stroke puts the piston up in the bore .050" half the total extra stroke because half of the .100 will be at bottom dead center) The crank shop might not be able to give you exactly .100" extra stroke but should be able to give you .090" extra and have the journal clean up completely. Finishline Performance built a sbb 350 with the 1.889" nascar take rods and super charged the engine that made 750 HP without breaking so don't even worry about cutting the rod journals down. Gsjohnny runs 1.889" rod journal nascar take outs and has spun his engine to 10,000 RPM by accident buy still it didn't hurt the engine! Derek
> Taking a look at the Edelbrock Ford 351W 2x4 intake, its an air gap unit, and the back half of the manifold will feed the back cylinders of my SBB 300/350. Sounds like what you really need is a pair of Carter 400 AFB carbs and one of these: That's a dual four barrel intake that GM cast for their early 1960's 215 race program. I sold mine (along with a set of the 215 race heads that GM cast up for Mickey Thompson's 1962 Indy car engine). D&D may still have one for sale. Dan Jones
