head conversion

[FastRonald]

8) Years ago a drag racer had welded 351 Cleveland heads into one for a 300 six. That thing was a bullet! Has anyone ever tried this with a windsor head or cleveland head for a 200? I'm curious if a 289/302 head cut and furnace welded would work?

 

[Fingers]

It would be EXTREMELY expensive to do. The 4V Clevo heads cut and welded to suit Bruce Sizemore's 500hp 300 six were costing him over $2000 US each in 1975. It would be scary to work out how much it would cost now.

 

[FastRonald]

8) You have a great memory! That's the guy who did it! I just wish the odd ball 351M - 400 heads would be cheap to use. Even the windsor heads.

 

[Anonymous]

Well it's not that hard or expensive to cut and weld aluminium heads. If you could pick up some used ones on e-bay maybe. I don't know if I'm brave enough to cut up new ones.
Anyway, the trick is to do as much of the work yourself as possible. Then find someone who specializes in aluminium welding in your area.
As for windsor heads on a 200, the bore spacing is way off, but a 300 might work.

 

[Anonymous]

I hate to be a wet blanket BUT

In the original post it did say a 200. It will not work at all. The bores are just to small, and the bore centers wrong, block to narrow.

If your talking a 300 then it's better but not much.
The valve arangment is wrong requireing a custom cam.
Welding aluminum is easy, BUT it will destroy the T6 heat treatment and will require a major amount of cash for heat treating and remachining.

I bought a set of Twisted Wedge type R's just for this. But when I found out that the total cost of the head was going to be in the $4500 range, I sold the heads. I just could not justify the costs.

John

 

[6bangerbill]

Fastronald
Buy a couple of aluminum ls1 heads on ebay for $200.00 and send them to me. I will cut & weld them, match head bolt holes and send em back to fit the 300 six not a 200 six. tanwlm1@cox.net.

 

[ASMART]

ANy on ethot of doing the same with the 2.3 hsc heads. The HSC was basically a 200 minus 2 cylinders so the spacing would be right. The head even had a bolt on intake!

 

[xctasy]

Problem with the HSC is that the middle section for the six is missing. You have a wider space between the possitions of number 3 and 4 cylinders. In essence, there is no cast iron around to mate the two outer section together. :x

There are a few issues with the wider gasket face the 2.3 and 2.5 engines have , but they are twopercenters. The 98 percent is 'where do we get a middle section to weld up. Perhaps the existing 200 head flitched up with HSC heads on each side?

Anyway, the HSC is a great head, very well arranged.

 

[ASMART]

I am not sure I understand the problem.

 

[xctasy]

Good on you for asking, as it is a complicated issue, but you'd never think so untill you look into it.

Cross flow heads have evenly spaced inlet ports

The detachable heads for the Argie and Aussie 2v engines, and the log heads, have a non equal phasing.

The intake on the four cylinder HSC is equally phased, but on the six, it is non equally phased

If you were to use HSC heads, you have to run the US style log camshaft, and theintake ports to cylinderss 3 and 4 must allow the exhast ports from 3 and 4 to be grouped.

If you do it any other way, the ports will be out of phase.

I've got to get my website up and running. It's hard to explain unless I post DGR8TIM's pictures of the HSC head.

If it was as cut and dried as cutting up two HSC heads, I'd have done it already. The clincher is what happens at cylinders 3 and 4 with the exhast ports

 

[6bangerbill]

What is an HSC engine? How are the cylinders numbered?What is the firing order? If the american cam is installed wont the firing order and thus the intake phasing change. THe new ls1 v8 introduced a new cylinder firing order to improve intake phasing. Pro stock in particular and many other drag racers have been doing this for years.I saw an article in some drag magazine on the subject. Their testing showed no hp improvement. Maybe drivability was improved someway. Not to change the subject but have you heard of a"High rate of lift" flat tapet cam? THe specs are comparable to "street roller" cam'.They are ground specifically for a tapet diameter.Like a ford lobe design is not interchangable with a chevy lobe.

 

[Anonymous]

Re: HSC heads

Why not machine a center block to fit between 3-4 with passages for coolant & oil. Make it appropriate thickness to space the bore centers. Weld it up to join the heads. Probably a little oversimplified... I don't know the HSC's at all. Would it be possible? We're welding 2 castings together anyway, why not a third bit in between?

--mikey

 

[StrangeRanger]

The HSC is the 4 cyl 2.3 litre pushrod engine from the Tempo/Topaz. It is based on the 200; IIRC the bore centers, ect match as well as most of the bottom end dims. The order of the valves in the head would end up forcing the adoption of a trick cam IF the head could be cut in such a way as to allow rewelding.

If you cut 1 and 4 off the first donor head and cut the second donor head between 2 and 3 and rewelded, theend product would probably fit a 200 block but would not fit any existing camshaft, intake or exhaust and would not offer any performance gains whatsoever over just slapping on a stock Aussie or Argentine head. Hardly worth the effort is it?

 

[ASMART]

The question was really to see if it was worth the effort and why it wouldn't work.

Thanks for the info! I understand now.

 

[mattri]

Suppose you were to cut the head into individual cylinder sections instead of a 4-2 set up? There would obviously be more welding but wouldn't that make it compatible?