Trick Flow assessment: I received a head the other day. I gave it a quick look all over, and stuck it on the flowbench.
Firstly, it is cast at the Edelbrock foundry. It plainly has the "Ef" cast in inside the valve cover, so it is not a Chinese casting. It is also not a regular Edelbrock core. It looks different from the regular Ed and the Pro Port casting. Survival Edelbrocks still have the external look of an Edelbrock, but these are different. My guess is that they 3-D printed the external design, and Edelbrock probably made a core box from it.
They have no thread inserts in the intake flange.....not a big deal usually. They have helicoils in the rocker mounting....a must-have at minimum. They have NO inserts in the exhaust flange, which is eventually a problem in my opinion, but part of the reason for the relatively low price. You get what you pay for.
They have 2.19 and 1.625 valves. The exhaust port maxed out at 220 on my bench. Mid-range flow is better than the out-of-the-box regular Edelbrock, but not spectacular.
The intake port flows very good to .550 lift. It has what I'd call a "Chevy" valvejob. A little lazy at .100 and .200 lift. At .300, I got 227 which is starting to look good. At .400, it went 268, which is very good for an out-of-the-box test. At .500, it went right at 300......a very good number for the port size, on my bench. At .550, 312.....then it went turbulent. At .600, back to 307 and noisy. Still, for streetable stuff, the intake port is really pretty good. As far as the vein in the floor, I am not sure......I only know that I have better ports that don't employ such a thing. Other than the vein, the whole port looks like a pretty close copy of the LS7 GM cnc head that they sell over the GM parts counter......right down to the "hook" in the bowl behind the valve. It seems to help in places, but it hooks the wrong way in my opinion, and too abrupt. I think the hook and a little issue in the short turn are the reason it backs up after .550 lift. Take out the hook, and fix the short turn, and it will flow more at the big lifts and likely lose in the middle, so I guess it depends on your use whether you would want to change it.
Overall, it seems to be a good part for the money. The springs are not high-end. I won't use titanium on street stuff. Point being....I'd probably buy the cheap spring option, and toss that stuff for better parts. On visual inspection, the valves appear to be good quality, but I'm not sure they will stand solid roller duty. That would be a question for Trick Flow to answer. I don't have much bad to say....I think FE aluminum heads need inserts in the exhaust flange, and I think the hardware is fine for a flat-tappet or hydraulic roller. The steel retainers are heavy, and the Ti are not a good choice for the street.
