That book was the biggest waste of time and money I've spent in a long time (well ever since I bought that electric ***** pump that cut of the circulation to my... umm... never mind that...)

I purchased this book for some insight on what SHM does to their heads and was trying to find the reasoning as to why he grinds his cams with more intake duration that exhaust (I was assuming he had a method of really getting some serious flow from the exhaust side of the heads). At any rate, his book is filled with nothing but bragging and back patting about all the people he's "friends" with (he mentions John Mihovitz's name like 400 times) and a bunch of specs that his blocks ect. are clearanced to.

He really never says much about "why" he machines things a certain way, never spends any real time about head flow and cam grinds (which we all know is where the power is), or anything. Just a bunch of tooting his own horn and giving us useless (well, not totally - but practically) specs that you only need to know if you own a friggen machine shop.

I WANTED TO KNOW HOW TO BUILD A MAX PERFORMANCE 4.6 ENGINE DAMMIT!!!! Not a walkthrough of all the damn special high dollar machinary you use!!!!!!!!!! That book is nothing but a sales ploy that overwhelms you with machine specs in an attempt to make you say "damn all that goes into building an engine! I gotta worry about all that?!? Damn I better just let him do it and pay him $10,995 for a 350 horsepower 4.6! Hah what a fvck job I'd say!

Now I've already ordered an extra set of PI heads and non-pi heads to cut up and demolish to find all the trouble spots - and I've ported nearly a dozen sets of heads and I've actually been "taught" how to port heads - but nevertheless he has the flowbench and he was supposed to show me "how to build a max performance 4.6". That stupid fvcker...

I called SHM earlier today and let all of the people there at that place know how I felt (about the ***** pump that is... no wait we were talkin about the book... yea I told em about the book), I was polite and tactful of course. I asked to have Mr. Highland contact me tomorrow at my office about it too. They said they'd give em the message to call me. We'll see if his hineyess (yea as in hiney - the butt - its a pun, its ok to laugh biotch you know it was funny...) calls me back. If not I'll call twice a day every day till he gets tired of it and calls me just to shut me up.

By the way, SHM book for sale - first offer to pay shipping takes... I wasted $18.99 + shipping + and two hours of my life - you know you wanna...

 

SHM is a bunch of hype...

 

**** sean. he screws customers over on all of his products. hes to worried about his tv show. but im glad you read it first, i was going to get it, but it has been on back order for some time now.

 

[&:] Who is SHM? [&:]

 

www.seanhylandmotorsports.com

 

Apparently nomo typer WAY faster than I do....lol

 

Well, building an engine IS kinda hard without access to a machine shop. I mean you can always pawn out the machine work, which most people who work in their own garage do, considering the price of some of those machines (the rotary broach for milling cylinder heads at my college shop is upwards of $100k). Anyway it pays to get in with somebody who has the machines because it saves you a lot of money on machine work, and you know you're going to do it right (well, as long as you're competent about what the hell you're doing.)

I was actually thinking about buying the book also, so I'm glad somebody else lost out first... Well not glad you got screwed, but glad we all don't have to learn the hard way. SHM stuff is pretty pricey, but that's what happens when there are only a few people who specialize in modular engines. If you find out how to port heads equal to or better than SHM, well you could make a killing on the side porting in your own garage. Maybe you could just find a shop in your area with a flowbench that would test your heads for you.

 

 

it was never a thought in my mind to buy that thing. the minute they sent me stock gt cams instead of the wild n/a ones i was supposed to get, costing me some money to have the tuning done along with the diag. we did.. after a long time of phone tag, they finally sent me the right cams and payed to have them installed. then i saw sean on tv working on imports.. WTF!!!!!!!!!!

i will have some SHM heads/cams for sale soon if anyone is interested..

oh yeah... thanks MD for spending the money and time to read the book so others didn't have to.

 

Well I have a guy here locally that flow tested all the briggs blocks I ported (kart racing engines), but I doubt his flow bench has the cabability of pulling enough vaccum to test a set of automobile heads. I'll call him and find out. I've found some instructions to build a flow bench at home, but reliability would be a concern - although it will give me an idea of what kind of improvements were made. If I could find used one with the valve lift attatchments for less than a grand then I would consider buying it.

As for porting heads better than SHM, in all honesty if someone has some hand eye coordination and knew the principles behind porting then they could certainly produce heads that flow virtually identical to anyone's "stage 1 or 2" heads, only port consistity would be the problem. When you pay $2k for a set of CNC ported heads vs a hand port job, your gonna a better job no matter how good the porter is because it will be consistant, but then again if the hand porter is a good one - the difference will be minimal and wouldn't make much, if any, real difference.

When I get those extra sets of heads in (I ordered em last week) I'm gonna cut a few ports in half and have some cut-outs, things I wouldn't have to do if SHM did it. While Im not a professional head porter, I certainly know what I'm doing and I'd be glad to offer as much assistance to anyone else here on the boards contemplating porting their own heads.