At first we were going to try and make a stock
set of cylinder head castings into race pieces,
but after the drama we had with the short block,
I got on the phone to the folks at Dart Machinery
to scam a pair of their "Iron Eagle"
small block cylinder heads and one of their
aluminum intake manifolds. The cost for the
heads complete with springs and stainless valves
ready to bolt up are about $900 pair. The best
news is they come assembled with valves and
springs ready to bolt on. You can order them
in many different combustion chamber sizes,
intake and exhaust valve sizes and intake runner
sizes.
The ports they come with flow a lot of air
and the heads make plenty of power. I doubt
if very many of you can make a comparable set
of heads that will perform like these have for
under a grand. The Dart intake costs another
$300-$350.
In order to keep the cost down and make the
engine both reliable and as maintenance free
as possible, I decided to try using a hydraulic
cam, lifters and rocker arms instead of using
the more conventional roller or solid lifter
cam and valve train components. That decision
turned out to be the smartest one we made in
building this engine.
Richard Iskenderian recommended that we install
one of Isky's Mega hydraulic cam kits which
includes lifters and rocker arms. He sent us
the 304 cam and kit (PN 200304) that has .525
inches of lift and 394 degrees of duration.
The cam has an rpm limit of 7500 rpm. Believe
that number because we tested it and trying
to run the engine above that number just floats
the valves. As you will see, it turned out the
camshaft and kit made plenty of power in this
motor and the retail cost for the kit is under
$390.
For the oiling system we went to Moroso for
a pan and pump so you can add another another
$500-600 to the total.
I took the parts over to my pal Bill Weckmann's
Granite City shop, where he puts together a
lot of street race engines to assemble the engine.
 For
the oiling system we went to Moroso for a pan
and pump. For those keeping track, you can add
another $500-600 to the total.
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