indy/ edelbrocks installed no gains what up

[vc360]

I installed the heads on my 30 over 360 last week .We shaved the heads to get 59cc chambers and with kb107 pistons at zero deck height I have 5cc valve reliefs. With the gasket at 8.5 cc the comp should be close to 11.1:1.These are the high flow series heads from indy which flow 275 @600. Ihave a hughes 5056 as camshaft . On top of the heads is an M1 single plane with an 750 silverclaw bg carburettor. I had total timing at 34 deg. this motor is internally balanced. It has 1.75 stepped headers. The car is fitted with a 727 manual shift and 4200 converter, with 4.11 rear gears. The tyre size is 26 by 8.5 inch. The best i have done with the above motor with j heads was 11.73 @114mph and the comp was at 10.5 with the j heads. They flowed 232 cfm @ 500 lift. Last night was first time out with the indy / edel and it ran 11.88 at 114mph .Please tell me someone what is wrong with my motor or drivetrain. This should be a lot stronger engine now. Has any one had experience with a camshaft installed incorrectly . ie not degreed properly., or could it be my transmission. The car weighs 3300 with me in it. Any ideas would be helpful . Thanks.

[rumblefish360]

Besides a loss of heat due to the aluminum, I would need a side by side list of before and after specs.
Did you change the carb? Are you useing 1.6 rockers on the cam? New cam?

[Dart]

Two things will be helpful here. What is the primary tube length on your headers and what is the cranking compression?

[mtrv8n]

two thoughts..

1) try bumping ignition advance to 36 degrees

2) are you losing too much traction..need 10 inch with tires for a good bite?

I question the converter, but i run a manual 4 speed, its not my thang. Also, i'm happy with the edelbrock 800 cfm..maybe you need a bit more..what rpm are you shift at?

[Doug Wilson]

My opinion - new advance curve... and bump the heads to maybe 12:1. Are you running race gas. Is the car driven on the street? How tight do you twist it in the lights? What is your vacuum reading in the lights at WFO? - this will tell you if you need more carb or manifold - it's important. cuda66273 can tell you a lot more about this than I can. I'm emailing him this thread.

[sixpackcuda]

The loss of heat as stated by rumblefish360 will cause much lower compression values.
Also I've heard of off the shelf alum. heads that have valves not seating correctly, etc. were they checked by a machine shop? Alum. does not cast as well as stock heads.

[Doug Wilson]

True stuff.

[Billydelrio]

How similar were the weather conditions between the 11.73 and the 11.88?
I used your flow numbers in my engine analyzer. The J heads had an intake valve flow coefficient of 47.8 and the new Edels had a VFC of 56.1 That is a big change that should produce noticeable horsepower from 4000 on up. The horsepower peak was also moved up about 350 rpm.

It may be that you have some tuning issues to contend with.

Billy

[skankweirdall]

First off, you need more compression. To take full advantage of the aluminum heads you need to tighten up the quench area. I run hyperexplosive pistons in my 360 at .011" out of the block. W5's milled to 47cc's and a .039 head gasket. Do the math. That's a piston to head clearance of .028". That is the quench.

Second, you need to port aluminum heads to take full advantage of them. Not nec. a full porting but, some clean up work is in order. Have them flowed to find the peak flow and pick your cam from there. Note: Peak flow is not as important as the area under the curve. In other words a higher average flow rate from about .300" lift to max lift will perform better than a higher peak with lower average flow numbers. Remember when selecting your cam to take into account valve lash, torsional and bending losses. Make sure you take advantage of your heads.

Third, You need more carb. I'm running a 950 on mine. We have a 815 on my kids 318.


Fourth, You didn't say whose converter you're running but buy a good one. I've found as much as 7/10ths to as little as 4/10ths with a Turbo Action converter swap alone. They have never slowed a car down for me.


Fifth, after all this you're gonna need more tire!!!

[rumblefish360]

And 6th...more money.

But seriously, a side by side listing of beforoe and after would help. Everyone has good toughts so far. We need to here from you.

[451Mopar]

Something is not right! How have your 60' times changed?
A side by side comaprison to your time slips may help.
How is your traction?
I would make a test run with someone watching engine vacuum and fuel pressure (expecially at the top end.) If the engine vacuum comes up too much you could have an intake restriction (carb, air cleaner, etc.) If you loose fuel pressure at launch you may need to re-configure the fuel puckup / pump system so the pump is pushing fuel to the front of the car. If the pressure drops at the top end you need more fuel volume.
Other than that, I would start tuning, tuning, tuning

A friend of mine is running a Edelbrock headed 360 not too different from yours and he runs high 10's, and I think you should also be in the 10's or at least the low 11's?

[vc360]

Thanks fellas. At the moment all i have done is change the heads and the fuelpump.the pump was a holley blue , now it is a magnaflow. the j heads were 65cc. the new heads are 59.5cc. the pistons are kb 107 at zero deck height. This gives approx 5cc for valve reliefs. The increase in airflow should have produced some changes. the j heads flowed 229 @500 lift. the indy/edels flow 256 @500 and 275@ 600. the camshaft is he 5056 as hughes. 554 in 570 ex 250 dur in 256 dur ex.quench should be only the thickness of the gasket 039" with the pistons at 0 deck height. these heads are direct from indy so they should be good. i cross the lights at 6800 rpm . i am screaming this thing. it should be doing 125 plus mph with this gear and tyre and those rpm. i am starting to lose interest in this engine.

[72Challenger]

It would seem you've solved the problem yourself. You should be running 125+? Well, no. It's not likely you'll get less than 2.5% converter slip. But with a good converter and 5% slip, you would be doing 122. Since you're only at 114, that means you have over 12% slippage going on. It's not your engine, it's the cheap converter. Get a good one and try again! You should be much happier.

[Doug Wilson]

Yep.

[tooomuch2]

May I add one more question / thought...

Are your head flow numbers manufactures specs or the flow numbers from your heads? Were the heads flowed on the same bench, the same day?

If not and your quoting indy / edelbrock numbers - let me say they are absolutely inaccurate. Edelbrock valve jobs suck BAD and indy's frankly are not much better. The edelbrocks and basically a stock head design with a closed chamber - so you should not expect much - especially if you had any work done the the "J" heads. You shaved the heads down about equal to 1/2 a point of compression boost. Aluminum you lose about 1 point (in terms of the effeciency of you heated combustion chamber). Your talking about 7 HP maybe from the loss of 1/2 point of compression. I assume this is a solid flat tapit cam? what ratio gear you running? Is it stock gear?

Let us know...

It seems rather unusual you are running the exact mile an hour as before???

[vc360]

the heads were flowed here in australia , and they are the same figures indy say they are. these are high flow series with offset intake and exhaust rockers . they offset the pushrod holes to straighten the shot at valve. they might be stock styled heads but they flow enough to make 550-565 hp, and thats all i want.

[tooomuch2]

These are the w2 style they are selling... -2 I think they call them.

[70RoadRunner440]

If you want a new converter look no father then the ATI treemaster 10" or "8" "tight" street/strip converters.
www.ATIperformanceproducts.com
Tell Charlie what you want the converter to do, and how many street miles you deal with per year.
Dont buy another garbage converter.

[hornet340]

i think wot vc360 needs to know is- has anyone tried these heads with same results? unfortunatley our track over here is shit so traction is a problem! the convertor is a "$1000" 8" built buy autoflite eng they built sum of the fastest conv in the country very reputable. 750 bg will make 550hp-275gph fuel pump with fuel cell. we dont know much about m1 manifold here? have made 450hp with rpm eddy, 238 crane 10-1 jheads 253cfm@.500. vc360 combo only showing 370hp. does anyone know how efficient the chamber is cause it most deffently isnt a copy of j's as u cofidently put it. good luck with .028 quench you will be sweeping it up soon!

[ehostler]

If you are wanting to go the direction of a torque converter, the best ones on the market for MOPARs are made by Dynamic Converters.

From what I've read in this thread, a torque converter will help alot however, it is not the cause of what you are seeing between the two heads.

[sixpackcuda]

Thanks ehostler they are close to me. I'm in the market myself, if I ever get the Cuda back from the body shop!!

[cuda66273]

Skankwierdall,

815 CFM on a 318!!!....you sound like those guy's from the AMC club telling me we need a 950 on the 401 AMX i'm working on...try a 650 on that 318 and go faster....I run a 750 on my 318 and we're swapping to a 650...the 750 is way to big although 12.12 @ 109.99 isn't all that bad I think the smaller carb will bump me into the 12.ohhhs or 11.90's.

[skankweirdall]

cuda, Its a vacuum secondary carb on an engine that has too big a cam, too big a intake, too loose of a converter and no compression. My kid just got his license so it was planned to be somewhat of a dog that could be built upon/ used later. It still runs pretty darn good though. I was surprised. The bigger carbs seem to help the driveability factor without really decreasing the performance. It has not been to the track as it still has the 7 1/4 rear in it. The kid has an 8 3/4 a body housing and 3.91 limited slip chunk, he just needs to buy the axles yet.


hornet340, sorry pal, I've been running that .028 quench for two solid years with stock rods and twisting it to 7500 to boot too. Changing rod bearings is a yearly ritual though. If you want some more gouge your eyeball out spec's it's got a mere .055" intake valve to piston clearance with the gasket and the lash set. .075" on the exhaust side. I know, I know. But you'd be surprised what you can get away with. I had the heads off of it last year for some reason I can't remember now and you could see where the valves are in relation to the piston. Didn't touch but you could definatly tell where they had been.

[cuda66273]

Living on life's razor sharp edge.....

7.25" rear end...not for long...LOL

[skankweirdall]

Yea, I know! But until he saves up enough money he's going to have to be gentle on it. He understands, if he breaks it he's walking. His work is about 15 miles away so I know he doesn't want to do that!

[vc360]

Where are all the experts at? All the magazines flog to ya how good all these people are, yet i can not get any answers out of them. Iam beginning to doubt the write ups about these high flow heads. 2 people now have said that their flow #'s are wrong . What about their dyno figures?

[tooomuch2]

Sorry to say VC their Dynos are "hot" as well.

I used to think much like most people and believe my 16 dollars a year actually paid for some good insight and information about my favorite brand. Then I did the math - no way does my 16 but barely cover the postage to my home for this TP (Yet I still subscribe - don't ask me why).

How many more acticles titled you too can build 450+ HP on pump gas for less than 2500 bucks can we take (all BS).

Back to the subject at hand...

Most of these guys use a superflow bench which is not bad but not "super" accurate either. Basically - head flow numbers mean nothing because what one flow bench will test the next one will be different and perhaps significantly so. What you need to do it look at the flow curve that tells you if the bench is lying to you or not. We can manipulate our bench pretty easy to make the CFM numbers do what we think "the reader/buyer" wants to see (we don't do this - but the mags do). mostly to sell you some new chevy engineered cam or heads.

There is some great parts out there and some ok heads for SB Mopar - but not many.

I like EB but I like them because of their potential not because of what they are. You have to fix a lot of things right out of the box and they require some significant engineering on the intake side to really make right. However, you'll quickly find out what's the point because you'll never get enough valve sping on the stock head rocker design to run a high enough lift cam to use the heads once you fix them. However, they are a great piece of metal and it's something to work with. With the fixes they are a good street head running flat tapit cams (No roller unless ou have $$$$$$$$$$$$$).

Hmmm... I should stop now - this could go on forever...

Mike
2 Much Racing & Machine
"if you want to go faster call me"

[skankweirdall]

Truth Mike. I might add that I have never bolted on or in a different part, especially something as significant as heads, without changing other things to take advantage of that. I see the potential for better performance than the iron could have given, but not much of a change by just swapping heads like that.

[Doug Wilson]

I think that if you take a stock engine, and slap on a set of Ed. heads adjusted to 10:1 comp., you will make more power, particularly if you jet the carb.

[cuda66273]

Mike, your absolutlely right about the magazine articles and some of the statements they make..total bull....

I also agree with you on the out of box parts most are waste of good money..has anyone looked at a set of JE's lately.....you need to spend an hour per piston to clean up the so called finished machine work.

I was at Sunset Engine Technology last week and they were computer plotting the profile on a Comp Cam for a BBC....you wouldn't believe how far outta whack it was...Pat told me that it was actually a very good one....some are so bad you wonder how the engine even runs. He showed me some profiles of identical cams...you'd never know it by the graph....

A few weeks ago I was at Beaverton Auto Machine and they were showing me a set of Indy Heads (unported) off a 401 AMX that after 3000 miles had so much carbon and goop built up around the back of the valves it flat wouldn't run...a combination of extremely poor head flow, way "Too Much" cam and carb..but all recommended by a magazine article.

For those of you in the Washington State area....you need to talk to Mike when you build your engine...I've seen his dyno sheets and he knows how to build the power....if only he'd let me put Demons on those projects for him...LOL


BTW Mike...how's that $2500 360 stroker project doing...haven't heard the final results with the giggle juice yet???