head work for 224/230 cam
Registered User
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 3,557
From: Carol Stream, Il.
It depends on how much you are looking to gain versus the cost. I myself might only use the LE1's with that cam. Then again, if you have the money, go with the LE2's. You never know, you might want a bigger cam in the future, whether custom or otherwise.
Registered User
Joined: May 2004
Posts: 406
i went with le1 heads/ported intake on top of the 224/230 cam. i am having tuning issues now, but thats being worked on as we speak. even with the tuning issues, the car picked up a definate amount of power. Lloyd said he expects about 370 rwhp or so with my setup. I think I personally may be a bit under that considering i only put down 310 with the cam. After tuning issues I will get the car dyno'd, which will be probably in a few weeks as long as nothing mechanically is wrong.
Registered User
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 3,245
From: Ocala, Florida
You’ve apparently been mis-informed. All top level racing heads (Nascar, ProStock, Top Fuel etc.) are CNC ported. If you’d seen the head castings you would quickly understand that teams would not be able to produce enough cylinder heads with an army of porters. They don’t start off anything like normal heads we are used to. How many top level guys are there around the country for every team that needs hundreds or even thousands of heads per year?
When I was down in Charlotte I took a quick ride out to pick up my 200’s at Ai & they let me take a few phone pics of some prostock heads. They hosted the best one, it's a 2” or 2.080” valve stuck down inside one of the giant ports. The valve would actually go all the way THROUGH the port & out the other end. The raw ports start out a little larger in diameter than a coin. Even if it were possible for one pro to work 24/7 they’d never supply enough heads to a top team. That still doesn’t touch the fact that there is no way a human, no matter how good you want to believe they are, is going to accurately duplicate a port as well as a machine. I like the fact that the machine doesn’t get tired or decide it doesn’t want to do as good a job for me. I know people claim who ever their favorite is is as consistent as a machine, but I think most people are smarter than that.
It’s sad so many people base a really expensive decision on what they read on here when half of the time the advice is totally wrong.
Here is the pic I took.
click for picture
When I was down in Charlotte I took a quick ride out to pick up my 200’s at Ai & they let me take a few phone pics of some prostock heads. They hosted the best one, it's a 2” or 2.080” valve stuck down inside one of the giant ports. The valve would actually go all the way THROUGH the port & out the other end. The raw ports start out a little larger in diameter than a coin. Even if it were possible for one pro to work 24/7 they’d never supply enough heads to a top team. That still doesn’t touch the fact that there is no way a human, no matter how good you want to believe they are, is going to accurately duplicate a port as well as a machine. I like the fact that the machine doesn’t get tired or decide it doesn’t want to do as good a job for me. I know people claim who ever their favorite is is as consistent as a machine, but I think most people are smarter than that.
It’s sad so many people base a really expensive decision on what they read on here when half of the time the advice is totally wrong.
Here is the pic I took.
click for picture
I'm sure everyone will admit a CNC'd head is only as good as the program though, theres tons of CNC heads that are garbage out there (not saying AI heads are garbage I almost sent my heads to them so I obviously don't think that)
Thread Starter
Registered User
Joined: Apr 2004
Posts: 185
i went with le1 heads/ported intake on top of the 224/230 cam. i am having tuning issues now, but thats being worked on as we speak. even with the tuning issues, the car picked up a definate amount of power. Lloyd said he expects about 370 rwhp or so with my setup. I think I personally may be a bit under that considering i only put down 310 with the cam. After tuning issues I will get the car dyno'd, which will be probably in a few weeks as long as nothing mechanically is wrong.
Registered User
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 3,245
From: Ocala, Florida
I wonder how much more could be gained with the LE2 heads. I wonder if they'd be worth it. my motor has 80,000 on a stock bottom if i got the LE2 heads and wanted to switch to a larger cam later i don't know how much time i'd have to do it before a rebuild.i donno i'll have to find some people who posted some dyno charts
Registered User
Joined: May 2004
Posts: 406
I wonder how much more could be gained with the LE2 heads. I wonder if they'd be worth it. my motor has 80,000 on a stock bottom if i got the LE2 heads and wanted to switch to a larger cam later i don't know how much time i'd have to do it before a rebuild.i donno i'll have to find some people who posted some dyno charts
Registered User
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 2,931
From: Upstate NY
That would be a good bet. How about this idea: a port is developed by hand, digitized and replicated by CNC then flowed/finessed by hand, perhaps by the same person who developed the port. This might be especially helpful when building a number of identical heads where it's not just consistency that's important but that all the heads are 100%ers not 98 %ers.
FWIW, there's no way any ProStock team would allow a picture of a head port they are actually using. It hard enough to get to see what the outside of the intake manifold looks like. PS shops do not have large numbers of heads, nor large numbers of engines like Cup teams. PS shops may have heads that differ from each other in minor (or major) areas. They constantly "tweak" for more power. Might they use CNC to remove most of the many pounds of aluminum from the casting that looks almost like a solid block? That sounds economical. So does a lot of hand work to get the ports to where the engine wants them to be.
Registered User
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 4,800
Why do you guys believe a CNC'd head needs hand tweaking?
If it did then the program was wrong to begin with and the program needs tweaking not the head after the fact.
With the CNC capabilities available these days you can bet that most teams would rather the 100% dead on consistency of 100% CNC over hand touching every port.
Yes the master port is hand done but it does not have to match anything that is the job of the machine to reproduce that port over and over.
If it did then the program was wrong to begin with and the program needs tweaking not the head after the fact.
With the CNC capabilities available these days you can bet that most teams would rather the 100% dead on consistency of 100% CNC over hand touching every port.
Yes the master port is hand done but it does not have to match anything that is the job of the machine to reproduce that port over and over.
Registered User
Joined: Dec 1998
Posts: 455
From: Cleveland, Ohio
Why do you guys believe a CNC'd head needs hand tweaking?
If it did then the program was wrong to begin with and the program needs tweaking not the head after the fact.
With the CNC capabilities available these days you can bet that most teams would rather the 100% dead on consistency of 100% CNC over hand touching every port.
Yes the master port is hand done but it does not have to match anything that is the job of the machine to reproduce that port over and over.
If it did then the program was wrong to begin with and the program needs tweaking not the head after the fact.
With the CNC capabilities available these days you can bet that most teams would rather the 100% dead on consistency of 100% CNC over hand touching every port.
Yes the master port is hand done but it does not have to match anything that is the job of the machine to reproduce that port over and over.
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
oldschool
Parts For Sale
16
Feb 9, 2016 09:21 PM