Well, I think I've hit the breaking point with Absolute Speed and the heads I have on order from them (or him, more appropriately). I paid for them in full in July, and still no product. What makes it worse is that he has had a full voicemail for the past 6 weeks and hasn't responded to emails, so I haven't had an ounce of feedback for 6 weeks. No, he's not out of business... he's just very weak at Customer Service. I've been very patient and even defended his company to a degree on the net, but now I'm thinking I cannot support a company that not only doesn't deliver promptly, but neglects to communicate to its clients. Sad state of affairs.

If anyone's been following the threads over at LS1.tech, they'll pretty much know all this already.

So, now I am off to thinking about a new plan. Still got my 224 XER cam waiting to go in, just need a good set of heads to go with it. I'm leaning towards the AFR 205s in the 66 cc size (10.1 stock compression that will let me add an STS or D1 in the future). There is also the AFR225s for a few hundred more, though with an 2.08 and 1.60 valve size, they may be overkill for the size of cam I want to run.

There is a lot of dicussion on the AFR heads and whether hand finishing them will help. Most cars are getting good numbers w/o. AFR suggests that hand-finishing is NOT needed with their CNCing and may actually hurt the flow. But logic seems to dictate that a good hand finishing job should help, does it not?

I'd appreciate any comments.

 

Hmmmm, I seem to recall telling you to hold out for the AFRs..........

This all sucks Chriss, your track record for ****ty service is 2nd to none on the board. Anyway, as Im sure you know, the majority of the 205 heads are putting down some pretty stout numbers. That makes things rather tempting but, (I hate to say this) I would wait until some 225 numbers become available before buying the 205s. Last I heard, the 225s werent going to be shipping until the new year.

 

I have a hard time believing that a race head, designed by engineers and machined by a VERY accurate CNC machine can be improved by some monkey in his basement. Having said that, I am not assuming just because a smart guy designed them, that they are perfect. Costs come into play as well. Paying some guy in the head shop to polish stuff is probably not worth it for AFR so they dont do it. A bowl blend is never a bad idea but I would not go further than that. There is more to heads than flow numbers, you need to realize that good velocity, and quench is just as, if not more important than improving flow. Until you have the dyno charts from a polisher proving their value, I would not bother.
Sorry to hear the guy didnt come through.

 

Still no reply from Absolute Speed? What's up with them! Eventually you will have a great head/cam setup Chris but the lesson to be learned is never pay in advance.

 

ahh buddie, this is getting outta hand...but when it all comes together, prob have the quickest car in the crew...one of them anyways

 

when i bought my AFR race heads, i was told not to even breathe on them lol anything to modify them would hurt performance i was told. the combustion chambers are flawless 100% cnc'd exh ports are flawless 100% cnc and i only opted for the 70% cnc intakes but thats only because i didnt want to pay an extra 500 for 6 cfm. i have a bunch of pics at fbody, they are having some problems right now but ill post them up when i can, you do not nedd to polish touch, grind anything on these heads, no finishing work is required. i mean if you got a cnc machine hiding in your basement then im sure theres something you can do to revise but nothing by hand will make it better

EDIT: here is the link to the pics http://www.vancouverfbody.com/forums...rt=45#lastPost

 

Maybe you can let us in on your little secret. I dont know of a company out there that will ship you a set of heads or anything else motor related without payment first.

 

That is true. Very few companies in this industry wait to bill you. But, fortunately, thats where its good to have a big credit card company on your side. Call them up, tell them you never received the merchandise, and they reverse the charges for you. So, I do get my money back. As long as the vendor (Absolute) cannot produce a shipping list that shows delivery to your house, he cannot do much. The only confusion might be that AS has shipped the heads to me a couple of weeks ago and they are stuck in transit - and he hasn't called to tell me they have shipped.

Jason and Cory, thanks for your input on the AFR heads. Jason, good to know someone who's looked at that avenues before and has some input.

Darren, none of that "I told you so!" bs please...

 

Wow, those bowls look good. AFR has definatly improved their work since I last looked at them. I would not touch those heads unless someone else was paying for them, and I had a mule engine and dyno to play with .
If you were doing serious racing, with major compression you would still want to smooth out the milling marks, but nothing more. Literally a polish, no grinding required. The milling edges are sharp points that will heat up faster than a "totally" smooth surface causing faster temp increases and a more likely to detonate. I am talking the ragged edge of the engines limits though. Absolutely NOT a concern for our levels . I would definatly not blend the edges of that bowl as it looks very nice as is. Would love a set of them on my 377ci .

 

yea they are nice heads, the werid thing is there is some sort of pattern to those little lines, the way they machine it makes it look like a swirl pattern to the exh port then it goes in the reverse direction, it isnt random coincidence, prolly some scienced out combustion chamber mojo to make more hp lol with the new dollar its not that bad now i ended up paying only 2300 taxes in but now im sure you can get them for 2200 complete

 

Hey Chris that sucks. Can you get the cc company to get your money back ?

 

Yeah, I'm doing that. Looks like it will be ok in that respect. Speaking of payment, did you get my cheque?

 

Talking to tony there, they definitely have worked hard at improving swirl characteristics and port velocity while keeping the runner small.

 

or in my case big port too w00t

 

Yes I sure did thanks. . . . I added a few extra zeros I hope you dont mind