Not that I own a third gen (used to have a 91 GTA, boy I miss that car), but I thought I'd ask you guys a question.

I've been pondering grabbing a nice L98 Third Gen T/A to play with, and of course mod.

I love the idea of a ported set of Vortec heads on the L98, but I also love the Holley Stealthram intake setup.

The vortec heads are great IMO because of the quick bang for the buck, the way better flow capability over the stock L98 heads, and the cost effectiveness of them. But, you've gotta have the Scoggin Dickey manifold base to use them.

The Holley intake is awesome because of the reduced intake runner length making the car breathe a lot better up top, extendig the powerband and not giving a harsh drop off in power while actually bringing on more power too.

Here's the question:

Has it already been done/produced or is it being considered for some kind of merger for a intake manifold base for the Holley Stealthram that would utilize the capability to merge seamlessly with the Vortec cylinder heads. The combination of those two in my eyes would prove a very formidable top end for a street car.

Thoughts?

 

Ive emailed them a few times and they never give me a straight answer which lends me to believe they're not developing one. I had the same thought as you and I already have the freakin vortecs, but no HSR and Im not paying $400 for a tpi base and I cant afford the miniram III for over a grand.

 

im running vortec heads on my car and i love them so far for a street head for the money.

porting and polishing them is a bad idea,it can hurt the flow. the guy i bought mine from (Tri-State Cylinder head repair) said that he had done a port/polish job just to see and he said it did hurt the flow,so i would stay away from that.

if they made a different base for the stealth ram for Vortec heads,that would be 1 nasty street/strip combo w/ a good cam and stall converter. probably mid 12's with decent traction im sure.

 

I was asking the same question last summer. I just went with the Vortecs and the Scoggin Dickey manifold. I wish the HSR was compatible with Vortecs though.

 

Anyone ever consider hitting up all the third gen boards and trying to generate enough interest to pressure the companies into at least giving it a shot????

Also, I've heard of some mods being done to the stock TPI manifold base to get it to work with the vortec heads (albeit costly mods). I'm wondering if the same would hold true on the HSR base??

The way I'm looking at it is that if you could indeed get the HSR to work with the vortec heads, you've essentially got an LT1 sitting there with all the perks of a Gen 1 SBC. I'd think easily that combo would get mid 12's with the right cam. You'd think you would be looking more for high 11's.

 

http://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/show...d+vortec+heads

 

uhhh dunno were that dude heard that from, but uhhh hes got a screw or 2 loose...people have worked them to flow OVER 260 cfm
the only way porting andnd polishing will HURT head flow is if the dude just hogged out as much material as possible polished the intake ports..and did some other dumb ****....

 

Unless you go to a carb, nothing that I know of will fit the vortech heads except the SDPC piece and they you are stuck with using the TPI setup. If you wanted to go with a MR or HSR, I doubt it will work. It might work with an Accel SR top. Not sure.

They are not cheap for no reason. That is why I would stay away from them. Get a set of AFRs and you can bolt it to any manifold.

 

They are not cheap for no reason. That is why I would stay away from them.

They are cheap because they were a production line head in the truck line from 1996-99, so several hundreds of thousands of sets were made from that tooling, if not a few million. It just so happens they also outflow every single Chevrolet steel head ever made including the Bow Tie. I run a ported set of stock Vortecs on a .060"- over 11.3:1 400, and with a flat-tappet hyd. cam, stock 1.94/1.50 valves, and stock stamped-steel rockers have so far gone a best of 12.15 @ 110.52 in the scorching heat of July, on drag radials, at 3850# full-weight 1977 Z-28 , including an 8-point 4130 cage.

People are going fast with these heads for a reason - they work, and work extremely well.

If a guy wants to go fast with Vortecs in a 3rd gen, it would seem to me going carb would offer the best solution.

Just my .02

 

I agree. Compared to what GM offers, they do work well. However, I tend to start outside of what GM has to offer when I want performance.

If he wants to go carb vortecs would be a viable solution. If he wants to stay injected, I would not go with vortecs for the simple reason that they don't offer much in manifolds that we can use. That means that if I buy those heads and I wanted to go injected, I have to go to SDPC and use their manifold and that would leave me behind the 8th ball if for whatever reason they stopped making them.

 

Everyone interested in a Vortec HSR should take note of the thread formularpm linked to, I was going to do the same link...

DF is Doug Flynn from Holley, and he was gauging interest in a Vortec HSR. He seems to imply at the end that they were happy enough with the responce to look further into developing them, earliest available being later this year.

If they offer it I will be getting it and converting back to EFI (along with some quick mods to the heads to support some more lift over what I'm running now)...


On the Vortec issue itself, I would like to see some results from a competent head tuner going to town with some porting, and valve sizes of his choice. I seem to recall seeing some results from someone with like 270cfm of flow out of them... You can get the premmoded Vortecs to support good lift new in the box for like $640, nothing else can touch that for bang for the buck...

 

Ok, I just read that thread on Third Gen. Sounds like it may be happening. Just later on this year.

That is going to be a pretty potent setup when someone gets a set of well ported Vortecs with a HSR going. Heck, I just may have to get in on some of that action too if it happens. I love the third Gen GTA's, especially the 91-92 models.

 

I would never buy Vortec heads if I were sticking with fuel injection. Why? Figure 500 for the heads plus any porting/polishing work. Then add the $400 TPI intake or $1k+ Miniram. You could easily have a nicer set of heads, heck maybe even a cheap Aluminum pair for that price.

Fastbird: If you want a topend crazy car, the Stealthram and a nice set of heads will do it. I'd consider doing what I am--LT1 Heads/Intake on a SBC. Ported, she'll pull to ~6k easily. Let us know what you decide on.

NOTE: I also though that the small runners of a vortec head and 4500RPM+ Stealthram cancelled each other out?

 

I don't know about vortecs but when I switched to TFS (big mistake) heads, I found that a loaded pair of TFS (rockers and valve covers) weighed about the same as 1 steel head without rockers. This will make your car lighter in the front when you launch, with aluminum heads, that is.

For the Aluminum heads, we have better heat dissipation (possibly more compression) and less weight up front which is good when we launch.

 

Just some tidbits on the Vortecs:

The best LT1 head was the 1996 *iron* LT1 head used on the Impala SS and 9C1 Caprice. That head was in development longer than the aluminum LT1 heads, and flows 20 cfm more on the intake side. That info was in Hot Rod several years back, written by Kevin McClelland who works at Flowmaster as their dyno guy, and who used to be involved with GMPP.

The 1996-99 Vortec head was designed using this *exact* same iron LT1 head design, with the only exception being the water-jacket layout was revised for use in earlier non-LT1 engines with conventional (non-reverse) cooling.

Vortec intake ports flow between 239cfm - 243cfm @ .500"(28" H20) in stock form.

Vortecs are a 50+HP bolt-on in a carbed application over any previous production small block head. Dave Vizard's fully ported Vortecs make another 100HP over the stock Vortec head using 2.05/1.60 valves. Fully ported Vortecs make phenomenal power.

Stock, unported Vortec heads can support up to approx. 460HP. Gary Penn of GMPP runs a set of stock Vortecs with the exception of replacing the stock back-cut factory 1.94/1.50 valves with a set of 2.02/1.60's. No porting was done. On the dyno, 355" engine with a .485" lift (limited by Cheap Street rules to .485" lift) solid-lifter cam, his engine made 479HP. This same engine made 650HP with an off the shelf single stage plate system from Nitrous Works.

If Holley makes that HSR for the Vortecs, I'll be buying one for my GTA and a set of 062 Vortec heads. From my own experience, I cannot say enough good things about these heads. Certainly theres higher flowing heads out there in the aftermarket, but the Vortecs do everything well and very few aftermarket heads can match them in the .500" and under flow ranges especially for a 170cc intake runner.