Reply to "aluminium heads"

Horace,

I went with the Edelbrock aluminum heads for the reasons you describe - I wasn't building a monster engine or track car, and the Edelbrocks were significantly less expensive than CHI's and didn't require the use of special intakes or exhaust, I wanted to reuse my Ansa GTS headers/mufflers, and the TrikFlow heads were not available when I bought mine.

FWIW, I did have my Edelbrock heads ported and installed larger valves (2.11 Int/1.65 Exh vs. Std. Edelbrock 2.05/1.60). Also, they have a nice 60cc combustion chamber, very similar to a late model LS head. I'm using forged dished (16cc) pistons for a 10.65:1 compression ratio, and run crappy California 91 octane gas without any pinging.

My Cam is a custom hydraulic roller with the following specs:
Duration @ .050: 226 int /233 exh
Lift: .576" int / .586" exh
LSA: 110

My cam grinder estimated the engine will make between 400-450 horsepower. Three different desktop dyno programs put my engine between 430-550hp (yeah, one was very optimistic). To be honest, I don't care about horsepower. My criteria when designing the cam was to have 390-420 ft.lbs. of torque from 1500-5500 rpm. This engine is a lot of fun to drive. And it really comes alive between 4000-6000 RPM.

As soon as I gut my Ansa mufflers I plan to dyno tune the engine. At that time I can post some actual horsepower and torque numbers.