Must be for the 1st Gen SBC, because the Gen2 Lt1 &Lt4, don’t have water cross overs like that. Saying that, they look cool. The last 4th Gen F-body was 2002. (94-2002).
Sportsman heads were the bomb at first cause it was all we had as far as cast iron head back then. Well bow tie heads but this were like big bucks. And the big name aftermarket heads. It’s not like today at all. We need a reasonably priced, symmetrical port gen 1 sbc head, shaft rockers, efficiency flow, and they would stomp LS engines. They do have sbc symmetrical port heads, but big money!!
Hi Eric, thanks for the video, great info as always, I would love to here more about these 1000hp 350ci motors, sounds awesome incredible, I'm guessing they were boosted?
Aurora's Pontiac part numbered, open wheeler block used D3 style Ford NASCAR heads. The heads were devised for an 8.2 to 8.45 inch block with 55mm camshaft journals, and that head appeared in AVESCO ( Australian Vee Eight Super Cars) in 1993, and a version of it is still used today in 2022. Bryant made the cranks, Aurora supplied the blocks, GM Powertrain the heads, Bill Miller the pistons, Callie's/ Cariilo the rods, but the Dart cast head porting was free after the CNC profiles and dyno numbers were supplied to AVESCO and Group 3A FIA rules. It was a generic thick casting from which the end user performed the porting.
Its a chevy bowtie 45cc combustion chamber. There was a 1st and 2nd design 1first design is 263cc intake runners and 2nd design has 240cc intake runners same valves
Back in the early 90s I would open up those GM performance parts books and drool all over the bow tie cylinder head section. I’d work all day in a little automotive machine shop and dream of being able to afford a set of any bow tie heads. Several years later I went to work in a machine shop that took car of many different world champion racing engines. The first thing I noticed was bow tie heads sitting on the shelves in the back of the shop. The bone yard so to speak. I’d get myself into quite a bit of trouble pulling those old heads off the shelves marveling over them. The older more experienced guys in the shop would just kind of laugh at me and disregard the enthusiasm I had for them. I’d tried buying them on many occasions never being told a price only the response, “you don’t want those heads, get back to work.” It was disheartening to a degree. Racing season ended and in come all of the engines to be freshened up. That’s when I learned why I was being told I didn’t want those bowtie heads Compared to what was out there getting it done they were junk. There were still about 7 or 8 out of some 40 or 50 engines that had bow tie cylinder heads on them. Those engines always seemed to find their way to the back of the priority list. Toward the end of the freshen up season I learned even more. The owners of those last few were obviously operating on a budget. They has spent so much money developing something that had been great at one point in time. Now they were just doing their best to hang together. I never knew about heat treatment in aluminum until then. The major problem with having these few engines with these heads on them was convincing the owners that it was time to get a new set of heads. I relate to it like telling a long term pet owner their pet had run its course in life. You could show them the hardness test (that was a pretty convincing visual to myself) and the owners would refuse. “Just one more season and we will work it into the budget.” Out of those 7 or 8 maybe two would make it off the dyno without a bad leak down test. Valve seats and guides moving around that you knew were just sealed up as perfect as can be. Head gaskets rattling around, you name it, that problem likely arose. The rest would have to be reworked and re tested. Limp them back off the dyno and maybe a few quick fixes throughout that season. The ones that fell to the wayside went on to that shelf I was always screwing around at. As the years progressed. You see some newer less used versions come in the shop. I never got to see a set that were not compromised in one fashion or another. Most of all I got to see some poor young man with ideas much like what I had that had fell victim to a soft set of aluminum heads that couldn’t be sealed up. Then there was the subject of re heat treating them. That’s a whole other story.
These were used in NASCAR as a generation 3 head. The sb2.2 was gen 5. On the track as early as 1985. In 1990 they became mail order from GMPerformance.
1998 2001 ….358 ci and they were not making 3hp per cube. The most they got out of these 358ci engines was about 950 – 970 hp…..explains the 182 mph @ 2350lb.
My understanding was that the 11 deg heads were originally for the Pontiac Nascar program and most of the Chevy teams started using them. Maybe that why it was a "little chief" because Pontiac.
These heads could have been developed for jr pro stock which was years before pro stock truck but only lasted a couple of years but it was sm block only class
A good SB2 heads which are similar, flow 420+. I always thought chevy only had the 18* race head at that time for sbc. At least in Nascar early 90s that's what the chevys were using. Mid 90s nascar started running SB2 stuff. I'm not familiar with the drag racing stuff though.
Eric, GM also made big block chevy heads for pro stock racing, part number 10051128. It has symmetrical intake ports to correct the problem of the long leg/short leg runners on the conventional bbc heads. Have you ever played with those? The vortec 8.1 heads go back to that same idea. The fact that gm sabotaged their bbc heads with the good/bad port design is so annoying.. If they had just put 20 more minutes of thought into the head bolt and runner layout, we would not have been stuck with the flawed design ever since.
Must be for the 1st Gen SBC, because the Gen2 Lt1 &Lt4, don’t have water cross overs like that. Saying that, they look cool. The last 4th Gen F-body was 2002. (94-2002).
how was this head made legal for Nascar when it was never an actual production head?
You ever seen the Smokey Yunick small block Chevrolet Hemi? I like it ; )
Looks like a Boss Cleveland Ford head
This is why I save old gm performance catalogs.
There are companies today that make symmetrical small block Chevy heads. They are not cheap. But HUGE!!
Sportsman heads were the bomb at first cause it was all we had as far as cast iron head back then. Well bow tie heads but this were like big bucks. And the big name aftermarket heads. It’s not like today at all.
We need a reasonably priced, symmetrical port gen 1 sbc head, shaft rockers, efficiency flow, and they would stomp LS engines.
They do have sbc symmetrical port heads, but big money!!
Hi Eric, thanks for the video, great info as always, I would love to here more about these 1000hp 350ci motors, sounds awesome incredible, I'm guessing they were boosted?
Looks like a ford head Cleveland or big block ford … interesting how they copy
Aurora's Pontiac part numbered, open wheeler block used D3 style Ford NASCAR heads. The heads were devised for an 8.2 to 8.45 inch block with 55mm camshaft journals, and that head appeared in AVESCO ( Australian Vee Eight Super Cars) in 1993, and a version of it is still used today in 2022. Bryant made the cranks, Aurora supplied the blocks, GM Powertrain the heads, Bill Miller the pistons, Callie's/ Cariilo the rods, but the Dart cast head porting was free after the CNC profiles and dyno numbers were supplied to AVESCO and Group 3A FIA rules. It was a generic thick casting from which the end user performed the porting.
Its a chevy bowtie 45cc combustion chamber. There was a 1st and 2nd design 1first design is 263cc intake runners and 2nd design has 240cc intake runners same valves
Isn't the strength of the larger valves, why they developed double valves? thank you for the video, all the best to yous and your loved ones
Wow that head is like Identical to the newer 4.3 V6 EcoTech LV3 just with an extra cylinder.
Back in the early 90s I would open up those GM performance parts books and drool all over the bow tie cylinder head section.
I’d work all day in a little automotive machine shop and dream of being able to afford a set of any bow tie heads.
Several years later I went to work in a machine shop that took car of many different world champion racing engines.
The first thing I noticed was bow tie heads sitting on the shelves in the back of the shop. The bone yard so to speak.
I’d get myself into quite a bit of trouble pulling those old heads off the shelves marveling over them.
The older more experienced guys in the shop would just kind of laugh at me and disregard the enthusiasm I had for them.
I’d tried buying them on many occasions never being told a price only the response, “you don’t want those heads, get back to work.”
It was disheartening to a degree.
Racing season ended and in come all of the engines to be freshened up.
That’s when I learned why I was being told I didn’t want those bowtie heads
Compared to what was out there getting it done they were junk.
There were still about 7 or 8 out of some 40 or 50 engines that had bow tie cylinder heads on them.
Those engines always seemed to find their way to the back of the priority list.
Toward the end of the freshen up season I learned even more.
The owners of those last few were obviously operating on a budget. They has spent so much money developing something that had been great at one point in time.
Now they were just doing their best to hang together.
I never knew about heat treatment in aluminum until then.
The major problem with having these few engines with these heads on them was convincing the owners that it was time to get a new set of heads.
I relate to it like telling a long term pet owner their pet had run its course in life.
You could show them the hardness test (that was a pretty convincing visual to myself) and the owners would refuse. “Just one more season and we will work it into the budget.”
Out of those 7 or 8 maybe two would make it off the dyno without a bad leak down test.
Valve seats and guides moving around that you knew were just sealed up as perfect as can be. Head gaskets rattling around, you name it, that problem likely arose.
The rest would have to be reworked and re tested. Limp them back off the dyno and maybe a few quick fixes throughout that season.
The ones that fell to the wayside went on to that shelf I was always screwing around at.
As the years progressed. You see some newer less used versions come in the shop. I never got to see a set that were not compromised in one fashion or another.
Most of all I got to see some poor young man with ideas much like what I had that had fell victim to a soft set of aluminum heads that couldn’t be sealed up.
Then there was the subject of re heat treating them. That’s a whole other story.
BBC heads have siamesed intakes…. what you have there looks more like a Mopar polysphere head …
These were used in NASCAR as a generation 3 head. The sb2.2 was gen 5. On the track as early as 1985. In 1990 they became mail order from GMPerformance.
Looks more like a Cleveland head.
1998 2001 ….358 ci and they were not making 3hp per cube. The most they got out of these 358ci engines was about 950 – 970 hp…..explains the 182 mph @ 2350lb.
I bet those heads would work good on a 400 small block.
Looks like a Ford A3 Cleveland high port head.
looks alot like a certain "Cleveland" head
My understanding was that the 11 deg heads were originally for the Pontiac Nascar program and most of the Chevy teams started using them. Maybe that why it was a "little chief" because Pontiac.
I enjoyed watching Pro Stock Truck.
This style sbc has been available from gm forever. They came up with this style head in the late 60s..
I think Mercury Marine cast those heads
The Dart little Chief has a symmetrical valve layout, but a left and right intake port same as BB Chevy
Looks like a modernized 4v Cleveland
Looks like Yates heads for a SBC!
The first version of that head is the Dart Buick head back in the 80’s
Huh, the video title says SBC but the video thumbnail had a Ford Cleveland head in it.
The top P/S Truck guys migrated to a smaller exhaust valve, 1.55 or so
These heads could have been developed for jr pro stock which was years before pro stock truck but only lasted a couple of years but it was sm block only class
Looks more like a A3 or C3h yates type
There was a head that was built years before that, Chevy was playing with a Copy of a Canted valve head back in the original Trans Am days!
351 Cleveland head
A good SB2 heads which are similar, flow 420+. I always thought chevy only had the 18* race head at that time for sbc. At least in Nascar early 90s that's what the chevys were using. Mid 90s nascar started running SB2 stuff. I'm not familiar with the drag racing stuff though.
Looks like a Ford!
those holes could be nitrous or fuel ports
I gotta build one now. Getting rid of the Siamese exhaust ports is the biggest win for me. And the splayed valves is a great bonus.
I had a set of the v6 version of that head, heavily ported flowed 420cfm@ .700” and would be flowing over 300cfm by .400” exhaust was 315cfm @ .700”
i wonder what the intake manifold losses where like
Called the Bowtie head used for nascar
Eric, GM also made big block chevy heads for pro stock racing, part number 10051128. It has symmetrical intake ports to correct the problem of the long leg/short leg runners on the conventional bbc heads. Have you ever played with those? The vortec 8.1 heads go back to that same idea. The fact that gm sabotaged their bbc heads with the good/bad port design is so annoying.. If they had just put 20 more minutes of thought into the head bolt and runner layout, we would not have been stuck with the flawed design ever since.