Don't think that I'm trying to be negative, I'm just wondering about some possible issues.
1: With the exhaust ports aimed directly out, they would aim squarely at a shock tower. Have you determined if they would be usable in a tower car? Being the ports are cut back, they may be, but not sure. Plugs could be a real PITA to get at however. On a non-tower or tube chassis car, certainly not an issue.
2: With such a big offset rocker, wouldn't that place the pushrod at an extreme angle? Would that cause an issue with bending or deflecting? Would it also cause an issue with side-loading the lifter? With a longer valve, a fairly significant increase in rocker mass, plus a huge pushrod to resist deflecting, it seems the weight increase might be a big detriment, and possibly hard to control at the higher RPMs.
Being that the head, adapter, rocker system and I think the intake must all be used together, not to mention a special distributor, or more accurately an oil pump drive; that would be a very expensive route to go. I wouldn't think many people would be willing to drop that much coin on an entire upper end, unless all out performance, in a non-class racing venue was the goal. I suppose somebody could make their own intake, only requiring the heads, rocker system and adapter to be used as a package.
Like I said, I'm not trying to be negative, just looking at the big picture. The pieces look awesome, just not usable for the average FE guy. Any chance to see a shot of the combustion chamber?
Geez Doug, why do you have to be so negative?
Just kidding, all good questions. To begin with, this head will not work with a stock shock tower car, there is just no room for the headers. However, I believe it will work with shock tower that has been modified by A) Running a coil over shock and removing the factory spring, and B) Cutting back the tower for header clearance. I'm going to be putting these heads on the engine in my 68 Mustang, so I will report on what is required for modifications when I do that. The other thing is that an awful lot of cars are getting the shock towers removed and new front suspensions installed, and of course the heads would work with those installations.
On the pushrod angle, which works out to 7 degrees on this design, have you ever seen a Chrysler hemi valvetrain? Those pushrods are angled way more than mine, and they don't seem to have any problems. I'm not worried about the pushrod angle.
Regarding cost, have you priced out a set of CNC ported heads lately, maybe a set of Pro-ports? You are spending a minimum of $3500 on the heads. Then if you get a good intake, and a T&D race rocker setup, you are up in the same kind of price range as my package will be with the single 4 intake. Add a Hogan intake to the existing parts and compare to my package with a billet intake, and my package may be LESS expensive. Finally, I'm nearly certain that my individual runner intake manifold would be less expensive than a comparable version for an existing FE, so there you would be saving money.
Regarding the distributor, I should have been clearer about this in my original post. A distributor can be used, you just need to have an offset distributor. Or maybe I will build a distributor that just distributes the spark (no pickup or advance mechanism), so it can be lower and will fit, and then rely on a crank trigger for timing and the EFI system for timing control. Lots of ways to skin that cat. My approach would probably be individual coil packs because I like the way that setup works. I've made a few of the oil pump drive setups for people, and have charged $100 to modify a stock distributor, so that is not an obstacle.
Finally, I would say that these pieces are certainly NOT for the average FE guy. These are for the race guys who think an 800 HP engine is not enough. The package should be good for 850 HP out of the box, and over 1000 HP in modified form. I think it also could be used to make a very mildly cammed, docile 650-700 HP engine. In that case you would rely on the heads to get you the power you need, rather than increasing the cam and compression. So the market for these parts is limited, which is fine because I don't have the production capacity to build a whole bunch of heads, intake adapters, intakes, and rocker setups.
I hope that better explains my rationale behind this project. I think the key point is that this setup is not for everybody, but it does fill a hole, as I perceive it anyway, in the FE market.
