cam guru's please come in!
 

I have been in the head market for way too long and I want to make sure that I am getting exactly what I am looking for this go around which is....
Streetability, the car goes to the track once in awhile but usually is just used for playing around town. It gets driven not more than once or twice a week so it doesn't have to be a daily driveable setup.
I have been through the "recipe" to 500rwhp with just heads and cam sticky pat-g put up and I have already duplicated his exhaust setup. Directing question to the heads and cam portion of the setup he emphasizes on focusing on low and mid lift airflow. With that in mind I have been looking for a good set of heads that will not require me to send them off and have a super professional work the heads over to get quality low and mid lift #. I came across these heads that Thunder Racing offers:http://www.thunderracing.com/catalog...oduct&pid=7330
On paper these seem pretty damn good. I am currently running a full weight 98 trans am with a vigilante 3200 stall, ls6 intake, hooker 1 3/4" longtubes, QTP y-pipe going into a 4" Flowmaster merge with a QTP 4" cutout, comp 224/230 .581/.592 114lsa cam, and the stock rear with 3.23's.

Would you guys suggest leaving the cam in and just toss the heads on or throw a custom grind in there since I am already tearing the thing apart? Any suggestions on a custom grind? Keep in mind that I am not looking to break any records here but rather just put down some impressive numbers and have a car that has power all over.

Thanks in advance!

change that first

I agree that 'on paper'' those heads look good.

I generally followed Pat G's recipe for HP/TQ. He did a lot of research, and I believe he is available for cam consultation.

Actually that looks like a decent cam you have now. You may end up with being able to add a little more cam duration, lower the LSA, and tighten up the intake/exhaust split. Perhaps in the area of 226/228 112+2, as a 'first guess'.

I am sure you will get a lot of advice on head/cam selection. There is still validity to the DCR concept, so your overall CR will play a major role.

It is always fun picking out a new Head/Cam combo. Lots of options.

Good luck.

..WeathermanShawn..

well hopefully I can get predator to chime in on this one. The car will be staying with the 3.23 gears until it blows up and then as far as gears go... 3.73 or whatever works best with the new setup. I am reading on the flow sheet for these heads and they got these numbers using a pipe on the exhaust and clay for the intake. I know the use of a pipe has always been known to hike the numbers up but what about the clay? Is this something thats required to flow the heads or is it another marketing deal?

just so everyone know what I am going off of here is patrick-g's afr 205's with a 57cc chamber numbers.
AFR 205s with 57cc chamber:
Lift.........200", .300", .400", .500", .550", .600"
Intake.....158,.. 220,.. 264,.. 285,.. 296,.. 300
Exhaust.. 122,.. 178,.. 217,.. 232,.. N/A,.. 241 (with pipe)

Trick Flow 215s with 64cc chamber:
Lift.........200", .300", .400", .500", .550", .600"
Intake.....138,...218,...272,...308,...318,...324
Exhaust...118,...187,...231,...252,...258,...262
Note:Flow numbers are based off of an average of 5 heads tested. All flow numbers are tested on a 3.900" fixture @28"h20, using clay intake radius,and a 4"x 1-7/8"pipe on exhaust.

I am kinda lost after looking at the flow numbers but I know that the Trick flow numbers are in unmilled form and the AFR heads are milled. And from the sticky the flow numbers will drop off quite a bit if I was to mill them down.

hardly any input I figured I would have people jumping all over this to tell me what was up. Im looking at the combustion chamber sticky and my compression ratio would be around 10.5-10.6. Would you guys suggest running a thinner gasket? I know there are plenty of people running around the upper 11 range on pump gas.

Yea TA man sometimes you can not figure what makes people jump all over a thread, and others draw no interest.

Don't take it personally..a lot of the threads that get the most attention sometimes can go negative real quick. Or people get tired of what they think is the same ole question, or sometimes people just do not know.

But, let me try to help a little. If TR is advertising those heads, I would call them and get some further additional information on them.

As far as milled or unmilled, most experts generally recommend not milling more than .030" or you can get into airflow disruption problems. If you have the bucks the 64cc heads you mentioned seem to perform quite well.

With my 62cc heads, I have occasionally run into some hot weather 'pinging'. The gain from pushing additional CR sometimes is not worth it. You could argue it all day, but I think you can get a 64cc head to give you great power and set it up to minimize any detonation worries.

If you re-post your thread as 'Anybody have these heads..and insert their name, you might get more replies.

Good luck.

..WeathermanShawn..

We sell & stock both sets of those cylinder heads. They're both nice quality, I probably have engine dyno data from several different cylinder heads with the 224/228 camshaft. That's pretty close to what your running for comparision. Give us a call if we can help you collect more data so you can make the best purchase.

I appreciate the help. The reason I am looking into these heads is because they seem to have rather impressive low and mid lift numbers. I don't want to run a cam with a rediculious amount of duration or lift. Ideally I would like to run something with no more than my comp 918 springs can take. I would like to keep my comp 1.75 rockers too.