made it to the reunion . and qualified for the quick 8. but hurt thre clutch & went out in 2 round

I’m using all 4 bolts per primary tube on a 68.5 428 Mustang using Doug’s headers D427 with TFS heads. Used special wrenches (5) that I made up to get in tight places. VERY tight. Several guys have said they only use 2 with no issues but I managed to get all 4 in.

I'll entertain your jabs, Blair.

Doug got mad at me because I recommended a Trick Flow head over a BBM head and then decided to cancel my distributorship because of that. 

Here's one thing that everyone should appreciate about me: I'm not brand loyal.  If I see an engine make 50 more horsepower using a different cylinder head, then I'm going to recommend that cylinder head.  If that makes the other guy mad, then he needs to try harder.  The BBM heads were making 500 hp on my 445's while the TFS heads were making 540-550, with smaller camshafts.  That's the nuts and bolts of it.  I'm not going to recommend a more expensive head that doesn't work as well.  If I remember correctly, that's why you decided to "revamp" the head, so that it would be more comparable to a Trick Flow head.  As for how the new heads perform, I'm good with not knowing.

You alone must have got all the good blocks, while practically every other engine builder I can think of got the rejects.  NPT holes tapped too deep, drill throughs on multiple oil passages, distributor hole not cut in the right place on the front china wall, porosity on the outside of the block connected to oil passages, bearing tangs cut wrong in the block/caps.  I know you're aware of these.  Ross had to sleeve an oil gallery just a few weeks ago on a BBM block because it was bleeding out internally.  It's always fun to find something like that, or oil gushing from a porous spot on the *outside* of the block, after the engine is assembled and ready to dyno.   I put up with all of that long enough. 

In all fairness, you have very valid points about a cylinder head not being able to feed a larger engine, cam spec requirements being different for different cylinder heads, etc.  That's why I asked if you had direct A/B comparison data.  It's very easy to make claims when you're the designer, porter, and assembler, but the proof is in the pudding.

I think with proper prep, the A scratch is safe at 600 hp, provided that it lives in an otherwise healthy environment.  Do your diligence re cylinder wall thickness.  Being out of balance or detonating might get a block blamed for another problem. Sometimes a cylinder splits because it is thin, and sometimes because it is mistreated.  In my life, I have seen more cracks in 428 cranks.  Hardly ever in the internally balanced ones.  Same goes for mains.  Many more cracked 428 blocks between the cam and crank bores, almost always #2 and #4.  Bad register and cracks in the bolt holes………detonation and/or out of balance.

The ARP main studs for FEs are not good.  You are better off with bolts.  Older studs had a lot more thread engagement on the block end.

Free public service announcement…….if you stud an FE block, use the 351W stud, and bottom tap the holes in the block.  The Windsor studs have more thread engagement.  The holes in the block are not tapped to the bottom.  You can stud five #5 FE mains with one set of Buick Nailhead studs.  It is an easy spot face job to get the nuts slightly below the pain rail and use the Nailhead studs in #5.  So four sets of Windsor studs and one set of Nailhead studs does five blocks with no leftovers.   It generally does not hurt to leave bolts in #5 if you don’t want to deal with the spot face.  Just align hone with it set up that way.

The deaper you can root the stud, the better.  Hone the cylinders after that is done, and hone with the mains on it, and torqued.  You will get better cylinders that way for a few reasons.

Mr. Lykins……I know you have never used the newer BBM castings.  That was one of the points I was making.  It is hard to back up a statement of “most bang for the buck” when you have not exposed yourself to alternatives.

I made the statement that the heads cost a little more.  BBM heads range in price from $2900 to $4100 depending on options.

I have data.  I keep it to myself generally.  Some would assume that a person who designed a head might skew the data in the favor of that particular head, in order to sell them, so I don’t do that.

There is a shop in Connecticut who did their own back to back testing and saw +53 peak power and +100 hp at 6-700 rpm after peak.  In practical use of any head in a vehicle, optimal results will be obtained by running an engine past peak as it goes through the gears, and you never want to be at peak power AT the finish line, or end of a straightaway.  Generally, the Trick Flow head makes excellent torque, and peters out and falls off fast after peak power.  Point being:  what happens after peak is very relevant.  We all put “peak” numbers in the dyno section.  A useful piece of info for an onlooker might be to include the numbers 600 rpm past peak, as well.

I don’t know all of the particulars of Brunson’s testing.  I do know that the TFS is slightly better than the less expensive CNC ported iron G heads that I sell.  When we run that program in a CJ or 427 LR casting, with a little blending, it is better than it is in the G casting.  I specifically said around 400 inches in my post.  I think Mike was testing on a bigger engine, and I think he probably used the same cam for both.  The iron head I sold Mike wil not like the same duration split or lobe separation that a Trick Flow likes.  I also don’t know if the chamber volume was the same on the two heads.  I know I don’t send out G heads at 68cc.  With all that said, I am sure the Trick Flow head is better.  Not 30 better if CR is a constant and the cam is optimized for each head.  I don’t know if Mike used the cam I sent him, or something else, but I sent him a cam to work in a particular street application, and there were driveability considerations that might not give the best peak numbers.  I also don’t know what they had for headers, or collectors.  Header design can help heads with less exhaust flow, and not have much impact on heads with better exhaust flow.  It is all about “combination”, which makes it hard to compare heads or manifolds by just swapping them on an engine with everything else a constant. I think they also tested an older version of my Street Pro Ports if I recall. Seems like the power after peak I was talking about was starting to show up near the end of a graph he posted. There have been a couple of revisions to the Pro Ports since the ones he got from me, so in that regard, the SPP info was a little bit dated.

I’m not itching to do a bunch of iron C4 heads, but they are not an “outlier”.  We digitized the heads I used, and when BBM and TFS had no castings a few years ago, we filled a gap with some neat 1964-cast Ford heads.

The higher end of the BBM options have essentially replaced the Street version Pro Ports, for most people who come to us for heads.  If a person wants a USA casting, I have them.  The 61857 Edelbrock castings are mostly used for NHRA legal heads or for relocated ports that move into a different performance level and price range, in my shop.

My question on “bang for the buck” was:  What is the yardstick for cost versus performance?  Seems to me that not everyone uses the same yardstick.

I have used HUNDREDS of BBM blocks over time, and sold many more that we did not build.  I have had issue with ONE block, and Doug replaced it.   You must have gotten all of the bad ones.  Did they become terrible before or after Doug quit selling blocks to you?

BBM heads were designed in the USA.  Cast in Korea……not China.  Last I checked, the South Koreans are not trying to do us in. The heads were never and are not a copy of anyone else’s casting or port designs.  I know of six households in the USA who buy groceries with money generated from putting some Tennessee, Alabama, and Indiana hands on BBM castings, to finish them into the heads we sell.  I am a fan of USA manufacturing.  I wish everything we used could be made here.  Maybe it gets back to that.  I would like to see it.  Meanwhile, for a number of reasons, most will use China-made cranks and rods, and valves from Argentina in just about every affordable engine that is built these days with new parts.

Everyone who reads this stuff should take everything people spew out on here with a grain of salt, and that includes myself.  Opinions differ.  Results are real.  Flow benches and dyno blah blah are only tools.  What matters is how it works in the car.  I “drive” my dyno a bunch but it has yet to leave the building. Mine has a manual load valve. I could go automatic load if I thought it gave me better information. If the dyno loads itself, you can’t feel a thing.  When one wants to run, you can feel it in the load valve.  If you have to “help it”, you can feel that also.  The strain gauge reads the load on the brake.  It knows nothing about the other side with the water valve. I use it to learn things to try to make the next one better than the last one.  Sometimes there is info staring us in the face and we don’t see it.  Sometimes we might not want to see it.  The goal should always be to improve.  I absolutely don’t know everything there is to know about everything.  No one does.  The guy who can’t learn, or won’t……will not have optimal results.  If you see trends of things over a period of time, and make adjustments that make improvements, it feels good.  I am rambling a bit now…..