jojobanks

So I currently have a hi-po 289 bored .030 over. I have an edelbrock performer intake manifold, slightly ported/shaved hi-po heads, edelbrock 600cfm 4barrel carb, edelbrock performer cam, and hooker long tube headers.

I'm thinking about getting some new heads and I'm looking at some of the edelbrock heads. I don't really know the flow characteristics of the hi-po heads so I don't really know if I'm going to be getting anything better than what I have.

main thing is I'm really looking to squeeze some more juice out of this thing so I figure it's time to get a bigger cam and some bigger heads. I don't want to blow a bunch of money on a new setup that only gets me small gains, but I'm not really looking to drop 5k on an extreme setup either. This is a streetable car.

Any opinions?

mr_velocity

I'd look at a set of Trickflow or AFR.

rmodel65

http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles...dup/index.html

JMD

I have a real affliction to the Edelbrock Victor Jr. heads....

Cast and made in America...

2+2GT

Any Edelbrock head will flow better than an unmodified HP head. However, with a few hours work, you can narrow the difference considerably. I did this to my 289HP, and it felt like I'd installed a hotter cam. Ran smoother, too.

289/302 Cylinder Head Port Matching

jojobanks

I already port-matched the heads, although I didn't take it that far. I'd say I went to about the black line in the pictures of that write-up.

hence why I started this thread. I already know these are good-flowing heads, so I don't want to waste my money buying a set of heads that are only slightly better than the ones I have. Only problem is I don't have an extreme camshaft in my engine to support some of the more wild heads (nor do I really want one due to driveability issues) and I don't have any flow characteristics for the hi-po heads to go by either.

I may just end up oversizing the valves and expanding the combustion chamber on the current head, but there's not a lot of room to play with, but the more and more I look around I just can't find any middle ground between extreme heads and mild performance heads...

P Zero

The machine work to do that will cost a lot. You're better off buying some good heads. AFR's or some TFS High ports.

jojobanks

that's what I figured, but the main problem I'm having is actually selecting the right head.

I'm currently looking at the AFR 185cc street/strip outlaw heads and the trick flow twisted wedge 185cc heads. Both seem like outstanding heads. Does anyone have any experience with either of these on a mild cam?

Coupe

Ya know I modified a stock set with bigger valves and larger runners one time, had a nice shop that is popular in drag racing here in Indy do the work and they turned out killer, even did the screw in studs and guide plates.

But I swear it killed off bottom end torque, at least it felt that way on the "Seat of the pants dyno".

I dont think I would go that far again with heavy cast iron heads....

P Zero

Take a look at the TFS High port heads (not the twisted wedge). IT's the heads that made TFS famous. They perform better than the TW's.

Although, I don't think that you could go wrong with either the AFR 185's or the High-ports. But do your research, those heads flow A LOT so you may need a different cam/carb setup.

They'll also change your powerband to a certain extent. You may lose some low end and gain high end.

I suppose the real question you need to ask yourself is what are you building the car for. Start from there and then pick your parts based on that. Because if you're going to get some monstrous heads, they may not be so good for the street. You may want a head with a smaller runner to help keep the low end and so on. Or if you're building a car that mainly for the strip/race track then you'll want a different setup for that too.

However, you may just want to have the engine blue-printed and balanced so you can spin it up higher, you'll need a different cam for that, and just port the snot outta the heads you have.

So I suppose we really need to know whats this car being built for?