Greasemonkey

I was wondering if you guys could help me out a bit. Over the winter I'm going to be swapping an 87 TPI setup onto the 355 in my Cutlass. However, I'm not sure about what to do. The tpi setup will have a ported plenum and base but stock runners from now. I'm basically looking at recomendations for heads and cam. The block is from the 70's so the cam is not roller. What type of heads are good? I'm looking for a cast iron head with around 72-76cc chambers to keep the compression at around 9:1. I've heard good things about Dart heads, but what about Pro Action heads? I know this is sort of vague, but I'm basically wanting this thing to run about mid 13's when its done. Any help is appreciated.

Greasemonkey

Anyone have any ideas? The car's a daily driver that I'd like to hit mid-low 13's while getting around 16-18 mpg around town. It's got a 2004-R with 3.42 rear gears if that helps any. For the heads I've heard some bad things about the world product heads and good things about Dart heads. However, nobody ever mentions Pro Action heads. They seem to be a good deal and flow pretty well. Anyway, anybody have any ideas?

8Mike9

Yea, it's a little vague in the question...

I/e you'll want to match the cam and heads for the HP you seek, flip side of this would be the stock TPI intake may not be compatible to the Rev's you need to generate the HP to move the Cutlass.

i/e heads and cam that make good power to (if you need it for your goal) 6500 rpms, won't match up well with the GM TPI.

The flip side is no use spending major bucks on heads that can support 500HP, if you're only building to 300HP.

Word is that the stock L98's with a decent port and polish will support 350HP without choking the engine. World heads are supposed to be better flowing than the stock L98's...so why spend more (than the WP's)for something not needed?

Just something to think about.

Guest

You should be able to hit mid 13's with the setup I have, its a 350, 10.3:1, vette aluminum heads, SLP cam (224/232 .497/.517) and other stuff like headers, etc etc. Still running the stock intake although its now siamesed and before I changed the intake it ran a 14.2 on a really hot day with a 2.4 60' time, so now it should be mid 13's easy. Seeing as how it keeps up or beats the LS1 cars we have raced with it on the street, I think thats fairly accurate. Its in a 86 G-body with the 200-4r and 3.42 rear. You may want to use a cam with less duration than what I chose, it will be more computer friendly and will probably yield the same results (or real close) with fair heads and a stock intake.

The pro actions are nice but IIRC have rather large ports, which wont really work right with a stock TPI. You might look at the 23 degree trick flows.

[This message has been edited by madmax (edited October 10, 2001).]

Greasemonkey

Thanks for the help guys. Right now I'm running 882 heads, so I figure pretty much any heads are an upgrade. If I were to run a cam like madmax's with a little less duration what should I look for in the heads? 180cc? 190cc? I'd looked at what Pro Action offered and I saw in the catalog that they offered 180cc and 200cc intake port heads, so I wasn't sure if they would work at all. Sorry for all the questions, I just want to do this right the first time.

Guest

I wasnt aware they had a 180cc... hmmmm
That would work. Probably a dual pattern cam with 218 intake and something different on the exhaust like a 224ish with preferably around .5 on the lift (not sure how close you can get with a flat tappet cam to that) would work and keep the computer happy and get you where you want to go. You should be able to run 9.5:1 on iron heads without problems if you take the sharp edges off the piston and the chamber areas, and keep the quench at .040, although safe is always better than sorry

Greasemonkey

Thanks for the help Max. Yeah, I ordered an AFR catalog and in there they state that they make 180cc versions, but they aren't in the price catalog. Probably just need to call and see what they've got. Anyway, thanks for the help on this.