known. Guys just want to let you know this may go on a bit of a rant, but every week I come to work and get all these links from corvetteforums, ls1tech forums, and several others... And frankly I just get all fired up about people asking for answers from people who frankly just dont know, or dont know the backdrop of who makes what and who sells what behind the scenes in this industry. So if I go on and sound a bit like a Dick it isnt personal just my emotions taking over and me spewing out what I think needs to be said to make some people understand. If anybody out there has paid the fees to post on other LS1 related forums and wished to copy and paste this please feel free...
Springs: every one keeps talking about Comp918's heck someone on the corvette forums said their head guy was taking the Dart springs off to put on the Comp 918's! THEY ARE THE SAME SPRINGS! People get this through your heads Comp doesnt wind springs, they buy from Associated which is owned by the same group who owns Pioneer, and PSI is the other supplier.
Associated and PSI supply everybody people....

Valves: All High Performance Valves made from 21-4N and 21-2N (stainless) are made by Eaton and Basso. These companies supply Manley, REV, Ferrea, and Dart. Maybe even other head companies. Everybody gets them from them period there is no other, so to say we use "JUNK" parts is stupid and an ignorant statement!! And frankly pisses me off!!!

Valve locks: There are several people who make these, we buy them from Comp Cams or Pioneer, Pioneer actually supplies Comp however sometimes they buy a quantity that is pretty large and we can buy from Comp at a better deal. These locks are machined hardened locks, not cast locks! You cant do any better unless you go to titanium, which mys question is why??

Retainers: Trick Titanium makes them, they are the same people who make the bellhousings for today NHRA Top Fuel teams, they are the best. They supply Comp Cams their titanium retainers. Trick builds them to our print that helps to achieve the correct geometry for the spring installed heights to be right.

Castings: Our heads have always been made out of virgin pure 355 aerospace quality alloy. We do this for several reasons, strength is one anybody who works in the metal industry will tell you it is stronger than our competitions cheaper 356 alloy. Pure 355 material is more repairable than a mixture of 356 alloys. With the stronger material there is no need for the deck to exceed .550 in thickness and shouldn't for reasons I will explain in a minute. With a stronger material there is no need for thread inserts, or HELI COILS. And why do people think thats good yes the threads are now stronger but the metal the insert is threaded into is still cheap!
To address the thicker deck issue, when the deck is thicker yoiu cant get as much colling affect on the chambers, this is bad! You know cant run as much timing and that robs power.

Machining: Dart machines all parts in house we currently have 13 Makino machining centers, the same machines, Chrysler, American Axle, GM, and Ford all use. These machines machine all raw castings. Afterwards they come from our machining facility to our finishing facility. In the finishing shop there are three Bostomatic five axis cnc machines for doing all the fully ported heads on, which will include the future LS CNC ported Dart heads. 3 three axis Fadal machines we use to make our own stud girdles, jesel bars for our pro stock engine department, blending the bowls on heads like the LS205 and 225, making intakes, valve covers etc. 7 Serdi seat cutting machines all model 100's these are what we use to do the 5 angle intake valve job and the three angle radius exhaust we do on the LS1 heads. We also have a cnc lathe where we make all of our own guides. There is alot more machinery here for the block department, coating deparment, and pro stock department, like Magnaflux machine, Xray machine, Spin Tron for testing valve train equipment, two dry flow super flow benches, and one Super Flow wet flow bench.

As for fitments and things guys have brought up like rockers and guide plates, and the stock rocker bars. These are easy things to over come and from what we have checked alot of things made to fit the stock heads dont fir hardly any aftermarket heads. Aftermarket heads have upgrades, more material in critical areas and things like that so those components offered to fit a stock head might not fit our head. Can stock components fit our head, sure with one minor exception, a light grinding to the locaters GM has cast on the cast rocker stands for the LS engines, then they fit fine... Very easy to do. As for the guide plates and rocker setups, why go backwards, shaft systems have better stability than rockers and guide plates. Thats why guys like myself who have the old engines use shafts systems!!

The head gasket issue has run the gammit twice now, and I hope its over with... If you need information feel free to call, email, or hit the Dart forum on there website, it called the Dart Board.

Cost: I keep hearing that because they are low cost they must be this or that. Listen people, you have grossly been treated like an import car owner for long enough. I dont disagree that cnc heads should cost what they do, but sorry a bare casting is a bare casting and there is now reason we need to sell it for more than a early style generation 1 gm cylinder head, they use the same amount of metal to make and heck almost less machining. The tooling was a little more for the cnc machine as there is metric involved but not enough to cost more.

Buy with confidence and if you are not sure again use Dart for the information, they are educated, get an educated answer from them and compare it to educated answers about other products, not opinions, but facts. I could bet half the AFR guys could have put a Dart head on the car and got the same results.... Then make good decisions based off good information, not just hear say!!

Thanks and again there is no intention to attack anybody, just getting where the questions are constantly the same and thought I needed to speak out... and educate a litte bit!

Thanks

 

Amen!

Higher cost doesn't always mean things are better.

FWIW guys i've been looking at LS heads for years now and haven't found anything that I would say is my prime recomendation, the Dart heads are as close as I have seen for a place to start out of anything out there at the cost. There are LOTS of other really good heads both aftermarket and OEM CNC ported, but most of them have limitations or need aditional work to make them double throw down. I would just rather spend less money on the starting point AND have a good foundation for going farther. The added benefit of the Dart heads is that you have something that is good out of the box for what most guys want to do WITHOUT porting. These are the only heads I have seen that don't have turbulence! The bench can push 45" thru these heads without a flow loss.... that's really important in my book.

As for the parts... how could anyone say that the parts are junk? The funny thing is the LS1 guys are the only ones out there who hate 918's but that was the orignal use for them, I've run 100's of sets of these springs without failure, I still don't understand the stigma they have over here due to a bad batch of them YEARS ago, that has long been fixed.

Bret

 

I have my Dart heads in a zillion pieces right now (or at least as many as Dart used for assembly) and have found the parts to be very high quality and the valve seats and valve cuts to be excellent. I am pleased with my decision to purchase these heads

 

Just to let guys know we built these using the wet flow bench and it flows at .55 inches of water, and they can move some fuel!!! We tested of few of the other guys and like Bret said their "finished" head needed help...

 

Dart 225 just put down a gain of 50 HP on the "other" forum

 

I can respect someone who tells it like it is, no harm there. Any idea when/if you (Dart) will have a CNC version available? Thanks

Larry

 

A when not an if, we are going to do it... Getting our ducks in a row first and then we will decide where we feel the market is.. We need to see what guys truely need out there for runner sizes and uses. I would venture to say it will be a few months before we get to the sampling stage, so probably more summer time than anything. Thanks

 

Thanks for the post the info is greatly appreciated..

 

Amen - great post! I said before that the LSx head market needs an eye opener. One member chose to keyboard warrior it back and forth with me regarding price. No matter which vendor, these heads are all very similar, similar material, similar porting work, etc. However, some feel they can charge 2, 3 and 4 times what others charge for a set of heads. Unless you have a unique, one-off casting, varying degree head....your head is the same as the others.

 

Dart331Stroker...

Thank you for your very rare and informative post...

Most Companys don't want the public to know who their vendors are and where they get their parts etc. from...

They want everybody to think that they manufatured "all" the parts...Which in reality is very rare...

Now on to the disease I call "Internet Ignorance"... It's rampet on almost any forum you read...

It's the same crap over and over on almost any board I visit...

Health, weight lifting, hunting, snowmachining, 4x4, sports, construction, racing, airplanes, boats, etc...

It's the same on all of them...You get a few self imposed "experts" spewing crap and pretty soon it's "fact"....

If you want a little "cheap" fun pick any board you like...Post something that sounds like "fact" with some made up points to back it up and sit back and watch...

It won't be long before someone else takes the ball and posts it somewhere else as "fact" and pretty soon you will have all sorts of "experts" posting those "facts" all over the internet...

Remember people, short of getting the "facts" straight from the horses mouth (such as Dart331Stroker just posted) use your head and take things with a grain of salt...

 

More ignorant, uniformed rhetoric from a web site rip off artist...

Talk about overpricing a market... look in the mirror...

 

Vettenutts - I've said it before but ... hurry up w/ your install! I've been waiting for your results to rock the foundation of some of these other cylinder head company loyalists.

 

Brian's holding out on mine... kick him in the butt for me..

 

https://ls1tech.com/forums/showpost....&postcount=153

Ed - please stop stalking me and/or following my posts. If you have a problem with me or my opinion, please call me at 315-569-3422. I will be more than happy to discuss the differences you seem to have with my elated nature towards lower cost heads for the LSx market.

Until then, I have forwarded your deragatory post, toward me, to the Admins.

 

I dont know either of you guys from Adam, but please lets keep this post alone so it can be used for what it was intended for and that is to educate people about stuff they need to be educated about.

 

My full apologies for interrupting your thread...great post with very imformative and technical information.

 

dart331stroker thanks for the information on the heads, i am surely getting mine when uncle sam sends me my check. its good to see such a huge company post information about there product first hand. thanks for the facts. only wish i had a choice for a dual spring too for us guys needing a .650 lift spring.

 

Then you should explain the cost of manufacturing to this guy. He appears to be an expert yet does not manufacture nor purchase any tangable parts of this nature. As for who I am, ask you fellow Dart buddy and he'll tell you. After all, I'm awaiting a set of these 225 LSx heads to "buy", not talk about... I deal with real parts, not web sites...

Ed

 

Comp 921's will plug right in as the machining is the same as a stock head.

 

Ed we (I) know who you are.. We are shipping them like twice a week and trying to get caught back up we have made over 800 in the last 90 days and it still isnt enough. As soon as we get the titanium retainers built we will be able to offer the dual as un upgrade for a little bit more money. The retainers will cost the same, however the springs will be more. Soon bunny wabbit soon!!!