Has anybody tried this. Have been keepin this set of heads around for a while. They were on an '89 IROC Z 305 TPI engine. Not sure if they are "swirl port" or not. Am building a carbureted 350 engine with dish pistons was wondering if anybody had tried these on a 350 and if they had good or bad results. Thanks in advance for any help!

 

If they are the original 5.0 TPI heads, they are the '081' castings. They are very similar to the earlier '416' castings and work very well on a 350. Their smaller 58cc chambers bring the compression up quite a bit, the chamber design is a pretty good one, and isn't as detonation-prone as many 350 heads are. They flow fairly well too, and are a pretty heavy casting, so they are durable too.

If you are going carbureted with these heads, and haven't bought an intake yet, you'll need one for "1987+ sbc with iron heads" because the 4 center intake bolts point straight up instead of 90* to the head. If you already have an intake, and its the old style, it can be modified to accomodate the different bolt angles fairly easily.

I used a set of '601' castings on my 350, they are similar to the '081' and '416' castings, but with even smaller chambers, and they worked very well. The compression was a little over 11:1, and I had 1.94/1.60 valves installed, as well as screw-in studs and guideplates, but I did no porting or chamber work. They worked very well - GOBS of torque, and the throttle response was unreal - it bordered on ESP

 

Thanks for the info. It's good to hear a positive response on this. A lot of people I've heard talking about this in the past had negative things to say about it but I think they were using the regular swirl port heads instead of the TPI heads. The heads I have were from an '89 IROC Z with 305 TPI. I bought the car no tiltle for parts. Funny thing was it ran very strong would roast the tires through 2nd gear but the block was cracked down both sides from someone who didn't know what antifreeze was. I sold the TPI set up and harness long ago but kept the heads. Have wanted to use the heads a few times but always ended up with something else. I will try them this time and see how they work. Thanks again!

 

Swirl port heads, by design, make GOBS of torque because the port design makes for ALOT of air velocity and very good mixing, but the dowside is that the 'ramp' that creates that effect becomes a big restriction once you hit about 4000 rpms. Thats why they work well on truck engines that rarely see anything over 3500 rpm, but are a poor choice on a performance engine.

Those TPI heads (416, 081, and 601) do not have those ramps in the ports, they have a 'traditional' port design (for lack of a better word) so they shouldn't provide any restriction.

My 350 with a XE274 cam (230/236* @ .050, .490 lift, 110 split) and 601 heads made absurd torque, especially in the mid range, and pulled VERY hard all the way to 6200 rpm - I shifted there because its still got a stock crank and rods in it - but it was still pulling pretty hard there too.