Truly out of the box? Edelbrock heads question?

[72bluNblu]

Ok, so I'm about the pull the trigger finally and buy some edelbrock heads for my 340. I know not everyone loves edelbrock heads, but I already have an intake manifold, headers, and rocker gear so I really can't go offset rockers or anything else at this point.

So what I really want to know is, are these heads really "out of the box" heads- ie, can I literally take them out of the box and bolt them on and not worry about it? Or should I take them down to a machinist and have them checked out first? I've heard of occasional tight valve guide clearances etc. Obviously I'm sure not everything is perfect on every head off the line, but then again that's true for parts coming back from the machine shop too. Although this isn't the first engine build I've been involved with, its the first with any of the major components being aftermarket. Normally I'm used to getting things back from the machinist and going from there, not taking things out of boxes I get in the mail!

So what would you guys do? Bolt 'em up? Have then disassembled and checked? Something in between?

[sleepychallenger]

i believe the 440 source heads are out of the box bolt and go heads.

[73Chally]

Mopar Muscle has made several claims that the Eddy heads are the best out of the box.  What's screwy though (and many of us saw this), is that Horsepower on Spike put them on the 440-6 they built for the Muscle Car Cuda, and it only dyno'd at 425 hp, barely more than a stock build.  I believe claims I have seen before are it should add 50-75 hp out of the box, but that wasn't even close. 

[femtnmax]

I bought Edy magnum heads for my 360.   I checked the short side radius, it was right at 1/2 inch which is good.  The guide bosses had minimal intrusion into the port... again this is good.  The bowl size below the intake valve seats were an acceptable size according to the flow bench guy I work with.
Some say that Edy's  valve guide clearance is too tight, maybe for max output out of the box.  But the bronze guides are going to wear, and wear at a faster rate than cast iron, so my thought is the guides would break in and be fine for street use.  Just check them so they truly are NOT TOO tight.   A little looser on the exhaust is correct.
I thought the grease they used on the guides was too thick, so I am reassembling with engine oil.   Personal preference, as I have seen the heavy grease turn into big globs of hardened crap that sit forever on the back side of the valve.
I would deburr the sharp edges where the head gasket deck surface meets the combustion chamber.
Some people say to  use  a head gasket specific to aluminum heads, that too hard of a combustion chamber 'O' ring in the gasket can leave a deep imprint in the aluminum head.  Edy and Felpro offer the gaskets.  I torque the head bolts in 10 lb steps, then once their all at the spec, I then retorque each for a clean swing of the torque wrench to the spec.
I am reducing the pushrod bump intrusion into the intake port, but this only helps at high rpm flow.   I just don't want to leave performance laying on the table.   Hold a drill bit in the pushrod hole, and eye ball the wall thickness between the pushrod hole and the intake port; leave 0.100 inch if you want to be conservative.....  I'll be posting how to make your own accurate port wall thickness gauge in the near future.

Edy offers two cylinder heads.  The '340' heads they say have an extra 0.06 cut off the combustion chamber to clear the older 340 pistons.  IF your pistons don't stick up above the block deck surface I would NOT buy the 340 version, as you are loosing ALL your quench pad.   If at all possible you want a quench pad... flat portion of the cylinder head deck surface that is within the head gasket cutout for the combustion chamber.  As some engine performance people have said:  Quench trumps swirl every day of the week.
The Edy small block heads are supposed to flow as good as ported OEM cast iron heads, plus you get the weight savings off the front of the car.  That was one of my big reasons for doing it.  Aluminum heads and intake manifold could be worth 75 pounds off the front of the car, then put the battery in the trunk for an additional 100 pound weight transfer to the rear wheels.  The car will handle better on the corners and grip better on the straight line.
Shady Dell speed shop website has flow numbers out of the box compared to ported/unported OEM heads.  Ryan has a great website. Sorry to be so long winded.

[Chryco Psycho]

I would be looking at the Mopar commando head or the Magnum haeds or 308 heads , I have seen the zero gain from Eddy as well

[72bluNblu]

femtnmax- awesome post! No reason to apologize for being long-winded, that was great info. I have spent some time on the Shady Dell website, lots of good info there as well!

I do have a '68 340, and as advertised with the KB 243 pistons I have they really are .018" above the deck . I checked this after sending an email to Hughes asking about their "prepped" edelbrock heads and which ones I should get. They said the same thing, the 340 edelbrock's will kill the quench and are a very "open" chamber. I still plan on calling Dave and asking about my particular application, he mentioned matching the chamber to the piston during the prep work on the regular heads but I didn't get specific info or pricing, both obviously important. That was actually one of the reasons I posted this question, I like the idea of having some of the "as cast" flaws removed and everything being spec'd the same, but I kinda wanted to get some opinions on how necessary it really was and how many folks had just used the edelbrock's out of the box. I am after all on a budget, and this isn't a race car. On the other hand, I want to do it right the first time...

CP- I have looked at the commando head, 308's and magnums. I didn't really want to mess with the offset rockers and such with the LP commando's, and now that I have rocker gear (got a really good price) I don't want to have to go back and re-do it. Also didn't want to mess with the oiling swap stuff on the magnum heads, and at this point I'd have to get a new intake too. And I also have the problem of the over the deck pistons (kinda screwed myself on that one,  my first early 340 build). I know that the Commando's have 58cc chambers, and that the magnums supposedly do too, which would but my compression ratio around 11.3:1, which is just too high for the 91 octane here in CA even with aluminum heads and way too high for cast iron. I'm also not sure about what kind of piston clearance I'd have with those heads given that even the 63cc eddy's (which are more like 65cc's) have to be machined for them.

So I guess at this point in my I'm pretty committed to the Eddy's (for better or worse), I need a 63-65cc chamber to put my compression ratio around 10.5:1 with the aluminum heads and don't want to have to buy a new intake, headers or rockers since all my stuff is set up for a standard LA configuration. I know there are better heads out there, and that other heads can be made to compete/exceed the eddy's performance, but it at least seemed to me that for my application some of those swaps can get complicated/pricey pretty fast. I may be wrong, but at this point in the build I think I'm stuck with my earlier decisions...

[moparmaniac59]

Why spend big bucks on a set of heads and not at least do some minor port work. I mean the "budget" Stealth heads are almost $1,000 bucks. Now I don't know about you, but that's not chicken scratch to me. I just built a motor and used the Stealth heads, but not without having a full port job done. If you want power, you don't want to skimp on the heads. Nothing wrong with the Eddy heads, but I wouldn't just "bolt them on". Heads are the one place you don't want to cut corners and expect to make good power. It was a learning curve for me!! I did see the Spike TV show with the 440 build and can't believe that they just bolted those heads on without any work to them. The guy they were doing the build for I am sure could have afforded a port job. Go figure. they were touting the fact that it made almost 100HP over a factory 1970 440 engine. Could have done much better!!

                                            Matt B.

[71chally416]

 You also have the option of the $499 rebuilt Indy Aeroheads with the 2.02 valves. Spend the money you save on shaving them to bump the CR and some porting and it'll run better than bolting on stock Ed's and everything you have bolts right on and it looks stock.   

[femtnmax]

How about cut that 0.018 off the tops of the pistons.  Then the tops would be flush with the block deck.  That would make your cylinder head options much easier.  Do some research on cutting whatever brand pistons you have.  There will be a minimum piston top thickness that is acceptable, and in CA there should be lots of places that have chucks to hold pistons for cutting.
IF you don't or can't cut the pistons.  If the Edy combustion chamber cut is 0.06, and and your head gasket is 0.040 (typical Felpro), then the "quench" portion of the cylinder head is 0.06+0.04=0.100 above the block deck.  Subtracting 0.018 for piston above deck gives you 0.082 quench clearance... which needs to be 0.04-0.05 max.  If the head surface was flat (no 0.06 combustion chamber cut), then a head gasket 0.052 thick minus 0.018 piston above deck = 0.034 which would work real well.  I'm not aware of a head gasket that thick, so it would really be best to have top of piston flush with block deck if you want to make use of quench effect. 
My old '68 44 GTX had those open combustion chamber heads.  Absolutely had to run premium gas or it would detonate real bad and after run all the time when you shut the engine off.
Maniac is right.... porting is airflow put to work.  I think it's well worth it, and for a street machine it's not like you need every single cfm flow that a professional $$ port job would give you.  If you can't afford paying for someone else to do it, look at mopar muscle magazine website in the tech section, they ported Edy magnum heads for the small blocks, and they also did a 3 part article on porting big block OEM mopar heads.  It's on the last page of their tech section.  Many of the basic steps are the same regardless of head type.
David Vizard has an excellent book on cylinder head porting for the do it yourself types:  How to Build and Modify Chevrolet Small-Block V-8 Cylinder Heads (Motorbooks Workshop) (Paperback).   Amazon.com has them.   Lots of good basic info, and he did the testing for the big block mopar head article I mentioned above.

You could easily get a 10% increase in flow for both intake and exhaust.  Enough you'd feel the difference, and the race track or dyno would show it.    I buy my carbide cutters from Mondello.com  Use a makita or Dewalt electric die grinder and buy a rhostat so you can vary the cutter speed, or make your own from a house type light dimmer.  Wear a 3M N95 respirator, and eye protection.  Slow the cutter speed so it doesn't chatter... you'll get the feel of it.   Take your time and measure often.
Get an old junk head, and practice first if your going to try it.   JMO

[71chally416]

The BB & SB Mopes are entirely different animals when it comes to detonation tolerance mainly because of the plug location. It has changed little on the SB even with all the race head incarnations right up to the W-9. They got it right on the 1st 273. It just happens to put the plugs in a great place to get to them too and keep them from getting cooked by the header tubes. There isn't much difference in having the piston decks above TDC with an open chamber head and having a zero deck with a closed chamber head as long as the dome fills the space. You can mill the heads to reduce the space, but cutting into the Intake seat or "eyebrow" (see pic) is the limiting factor if you use a grinder that cuts the entire surface in one shot. It sticks up past the flat part of the chamber. About .060" is all you can mill.     

[72bluNblu]

Ok, hang on here guys. I appreciate all the info  , but I think what I'm trying to say is I'm pretty much decided on the Eddy's. I know not everyone is a big fan of them, or of aluminum heads at all, but after looking at a lot of info I decided they were the best "bang for my buck" on this build. I didn't have a set of heads with my engine, and after looking at a lot of websites and machine shops I came to the conclusion that I couldn't buy and build a set of heads that would outflow the Edelbrock's for less than $1400, which is what the Eddy's cost. Now, that isn't doing the work myself, but I don't have the tools or access to a flow bench to do a lot of home port work, and after I buy what I need and screw up a head or two I'm probably better off paying someone...

Here's what I've got so far on this one (literally, I have all these parts already, so I don't want to change geometry...). Also, the shortblock is balanced and assembled, so I won't be machining any pistons.

1968 340, .060" over, KB 243 pistons. ~10.5:1 with 65cc heads, displacement comes to 350 ci
Forged crank, .010 under, balanced the entire assembly
Stock rods, resized, ARP bolts
Lunati 060404- duration 276/284 lift .513/.533
Eddy RPM air gap intake
Hooker Super Comps, 1 3/4" ceramic coated headers
Harland sharp roller rockers (yeah I know, totally overkill, but I got a great deal... )

I picked this set up looking for 400 to 450 hp, although I think I may have gone a little overboard on that. But thats really all I want out of it, so while I would love to port the hell out of everything, I don't think its necessary to get to where I want to be, and I can put the money somewhere else. Plus, since I'm running a stock block and rods, I don't want to push more than 500 hp anyway.

On the Aeroheads, even the 2.02 heads only come with springs good to .509" of lift, which means I already have to upgrade the springs for my cam. Not a problem, but not $499 each either, so I'd be over $1k already. Unless I'm wrong, they're just rebuilt stockers, so flow numbers with the 2.02's are likely going resemble flows for 2.02 J or X heads. Which means I'll need port work to even get to the flows of the edelbrock's out of the box. Even a stage 1 port job is going to be in the neighborhood of $400, which puts me over the cost of the Eddy's.

Now, I'm not just making this stuff up, I based my info on flow data thats out there, either off of Shady Dell's site (which has the out of the box eddy's flowing 260 cfm at .550"  ) or here http://www.mopar1.us/cylhead.html, which is probably more realistic.

I also looked at the info here on some 360 builds with dyno numbers ttp://www.mopar1.us/dyno.html, which helped guide my build and my estimated hp #'s.

Anyway, it looks like I'm going to call some machine shops and see if I can't figure out if I have to go with the 340 specific heads to clear the pistons/valves or if it would be better to do some machining on the 360 heads (after all that's what edelbrock does, but more generically). I do appreciate all the info, and if anyone else has a set of eddy's I'd love to know what you did/didn't do to them before you bolted 'em up! 

[mopower]

buy the bare heads, as the springs are week. you will end up replacing to a higher springs anyway. also i would recomend inserting all boltholes, cause alluminum is soft and its smart to do it before install. allso you will want better rockers so bare is a better place to start. have not heard anyone mention that eddys are about the same as port and polished factory heads not to mention 50 pds weight loss...imo

[nivvy]

i believe the 440 source heads are out of the box bolt and go heads.

thats a joke right... see signature.... 

[71chally416]

The Aeoheads are $499 a PAIR. And I believe you can ask for different springs when you buy them. I first found out about those heads in a budget engine shootout they had in a magazine. (Maybe HotRod??) The Mopar won the contest when the Dart they put the engine in did 12.70's. I think the limit was $2,500 to build the engine and they used the $499 Aero heads. Can't beat the price for a 3 angle VJ, bronze guide liners and all new SS valves, retainers, locks and springs. 

[sleepychallenger]

thats a joke right... see signature.... 

sorry Jason, havent seen that thread. i am on page 5 and they are seeming to bash every head out there saying that no head is out of the box bolt on. and whoever Dwayn  is that made all these findings is, he deleted his posts so now i cant even see what they are referencing. grrrr