ChevyGuy87

i saw a set of heads advertised in Chevy High Performance. reconditioned 65cc, new 2.02/1.60 valves w/ 3 angle job and bronze guides, complete heads with springs good to .525 lift for $369. I called and got a casting number of "434". are these decent heads? or at least better than the 76cc '82 truck heads i already have? any and all help would be appreciated

F-BIRD'88

According to the head casting listings on Mortec.com

354434.....75-79...262/267/305...60cc chambers

10045434........................Over the counter Pontiac 15' head
55cc, angle plug, raised runner
aluminum, "roll over" head


1'st I'd avoid any 305 type head that had 2.02's installed
It weakens the casting too much.

The second # : Not likely

I'd get clarification by getting the whole casting number off the heads.

ChevyGuy87

i saw those on there, but i didn't think that those were the same head that i was looking at, because of the difference in size of the combustion chamber

jimmy_mac

un-shrouding the valves probably adds the extra cc's to the chamber.

Randy82WS7

what number are your 82 truck heads ?

ChevyGuy87

they're 462624, with 1.72/1.5 valves

Randy82WS7

ewwww !! no wonder youre looking for other heads!

good luck

RB83L69

I talked to that guy on behalf of somebody else... he doesn't give very good phone, does he...

Those $479 "434" heads are crap. Basically a polished turd. His description to me was "they're almost as good as a 882 casting". Well, I throw 882s in the garbage; or if the garbage man gets mad because they're too heavy, I pay somebody to come haul them off, because their value in scrap metal is less than the gas it takes for me to haul them myself. He does have decent ones available though, but not for that price. I have no clue about his machine work quality or any of that; but his prices are about typical for high-perf worked stock heads. His price for a set of 186 castings with the same treatment is about $700, which is reasonable. I have a couple of sets of 186s; and if I had to buy them at $200 a set for the cores and pay street prices for machine work on them, I'd easily have far more than $700 in them. $200 for valves, $100 for springs, $100 worth of studs & guide plates, $150 for valve grinding, $100 for bronze guide bushings, ... and then we start paying for porting by the hour, usually around 4 hours at $60/hour.

This is why it make so little sense to work up junkyard heads any more: you can buy a set of aftermarket NEW castings that are better in every way, for the same money. It makes no sense whatsoever to take a bunch of crappy 267/305 heads and go through all kinds of money-spending monkey-motion over them, basically polishing the turd; but by the time you buy and work up a set of castings that are actually worth the trouble, you've overspent compared to the alternatives.