are bare or assembled heads a better deal?

[grumpyvette]

BARE heads almost always require aditional work like spring seats cut and a 3 angle valve job , clearance work,bowl and port clean-up and careful fitting of components, you can,t just drop valves and springs,retainers,studs,guide plates,rockers,ETC. and expect to get them to work correctly or the valves to seat fully

the advantage to buying bare heads is that you get to custom build the valve train to your clearances and component selection and not waste money throwing away parts or redoing machine work,the dis-advantage (if you want to call it that) is that the total price will almost always be higher for a complete set of heads BUT THE FINNISHED HEADS AND VALVE TRAIN WILL BE CORRECTLY FITTED AND CLEARANCED AND USE BETTER QUALITY PARTS IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR DOING or deal with a machine shop that does

if this is a street engine buying the assembled heads will almost always be the cheaper price in the long run, but on a serious racing engine starting with bare heads and a QUALITY machine shop is the better choice

before you decide find out what the port and clearance work and additional parts cost plus labor and what you get for the extra expense? in most cases there is a significant advantage to buying assembled heads and saving some money if your not racing, but when getting everything correct is more important than cost, an attention to those last little details that make a few extra hp matter and results at the track are measured in hundreds of a second then use bare heads and do it correctly

 

I rarely buy bare heads if its going to be a street strip engine because I can dis-assemble them and do most of the minor port work and clearance work cheaply, but I almost always purchase BARE heads and start from there if its a serious racing engine, simply because your kidding yourself if you think the best springs,retainers are used and exact clearance work gets done on production head assemblys

[Guest 502ZX]

You speak the gospell, Grumpyvette! All should listen and heed this advice, I only wish I had a couple years ago when I bought my "great deal" bare Merlin castings. 1250.00 canadian dollars sounded like a good deal until they hit the machine shop and required another 2200.00 in machining and hardware. In my case the heads did not come as expected, they were be ready for 1.625 springs but were only cut for 1.55, they were to be ready for 5/16 valve stems but had 3/8 guides in them, AARGH! Yes the end result is an impressive, well machined and accurate set of heads BUT at the end of the day I could have had aluminum ready to go CNC ported heads for nearly the same price, but I try not to think of it these days....too much pain. I did not get much satisfaction after contacting the manufacturer, I should probably add. If I was to do it over, it would be AFR all the way, lots of friends with good results and some impressive performance improvements. Cheers!