i'm starting my research for possibly doing heads for my 355 TPI build, right now the motor is being bored .030 over, putting in sealed performance rebuild kit, will be doing a crane 2032 cam and have a new prom chip for the motor.....i went on to summitracing and plugged in the filters for selecting heads (not too sure what i'm looking at lol) and got this far: http://www.summitracing.com/search/m...tyle/assembled

so i'm looking for anyone that can help me go from here, either i'll get vortec heads (kinda nervous cuz i dont trust myself to find the right ones) or i'll get new ones from summit, but like i said i need help please.

 

Your budget for heads is important to know.

Vortecs are a good option and will make great torque with a traditional TPI. But the problem with a Vortec TPI is you need the Vortec specific TPI intake manifold that is expensive and mediocre at best. A set of traditional heads is probably best. Plus if you have a cam done you need to get the valve seats cut and all that other stuff unless they came machined or have beehive springs.

Switching to Vortecs would probably run you $1000 and you can get a pretty solid set of traditional heads for that much or a very high quality set for a few hundred more.

 

ah, thanks....so with traditional heads (kinda looking at the ZZ4) i WILL NOT need machining with the cam?

 

and as far as budget, i kinda dont want to spend more than 1000, but i'lll go up to 1200 if need be

 

I think the Darts are around 1200. You could run vortecs if you really wanted to, not all are limited to lift. Only the GM heads. I personally would just get a set of Dart or trickflow heads, I regret going Vortec, it was a lot of extra cost for very little extra horsepower.

 

The ZZ4's arent that great? i just kinda liked the idea of keeping it with chevy performance.

1200 is like at the near breaking point of my budget (plus it means i have to keep the reciepts better hidden from the wife lol)

 

For the price you can have better. The benefit of the zz4 heads is that they're aluminum rather than iron.

 

ah gotcha.....I'm not looking to make a racecar really, although i would like to make a little more power than my neighbor's 82 vette (has a stock motor stroked to 383 w/600 cfm edlebrock carb, i think he said it makes about 360 hp) and right now i'm not too sure how much i trust the heads that came with the motor since it was all under about 4 ft of water last year.
As much as you talk about the other heads, for some reason i cant keep myself from gravitating still for the ZZ4's.....hmmm

 

take a look at this for some ideas:

http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles...head_shootout/

 

Interesting the 185cc Patriot was right on par if not better than the 200cc Dart .
Thats saying something. Wonder how the quality is these days
Cheap heads scare me

 

Dart shp 180's are supposively better than the 200's. a shop tested them and found the 180's at cc closer to 195 than 180, and flowed about same as the 200's. no idea what the 200's actually cc out at.

I really am impressed with summit 170's, with 2.02 valves. Seems large for a small cc port, but made big numbers. Find that hard to believe, it probably cc's larger

 

after looking at the comparisons...i think i may lean toward the summit's now lol